IF ANYONE BUT Anne Carson had rewritten Euripides' Helen as a play about Marilyn Monroe, I would probably not have picked it up, but Anne Carson being an estimable classicist as well as an excellent poet...well, why not?
It's a short one-character play (Norma Jeane was played by Ben Whishaw in the spring 2019 premier, which must have been interesting). Marilyn Monroe makes an apt analogue for Helen of Troy. Carson brings out a storyline of the war in Troy that runs a little like this--"You are so luscious that we will kill each other over the question of who gets to fuck you, so this whole war is your fault"--and Monroe's being eventually overwhelmed by the male fantasies and projections she inspired tellingly rhymes her situation with Helen's.
With the final scene especially, Carson steps up with Simone Weil and Alice Oswald as another woman writer giving us news we can use on the matter of Troy. (Maybe Emily Wilson too--I have not yet read her new translation of the Iliad).
Brilliant little mini-essays on several relevant Greek words (e.g., eidolon, trauma) between scenes--were these part of the stage production, too? Hope I get to find out someday.
No comments:
Post a Comment