Iphigenia

 

Was supposed to see this on Thursday night, but we missed the train and the chance to see the performance I was ticketed to see. But there was a single ticket available for tonight's performance and it was an interesting telling of an old, old story. In that respect, it falls right into the wheelhouse of this sabbatical. 

The face of Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships, but ships can only launch if there is wind. Agamemnon, his brother Menelaus (whose honor is made synonymous with Greek honor in making war on Troy for Helen's abduction/escape), and Ulysses agree that a sacrifice is required to summon the wind. The sacrifice is Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigenia. As the story begins on stage, the chorus speaks of it as a story remembered, a story that is told with anger because of how it ends. It always ends badly. But as the characters enter they occasionally challenge the chorus' remembered tale. Menelaus refuses to cry as the chorus suggests. Clytemnestra won't fall to her knees. More significantly, Agamemnon attempts to abort the sacrifice altogether. But as his wife Clytemnestra arrives with their daughter, events take on an inevitability, even as the characters struggle to find a way out.

Is sacrifice ever justified? Can it be made right to legitimize a questionable war over a questionable woman? 

The story of the sacrifice of Isaac pre-dates the plays by Euripides that tell the story of Iphigenia, but both are saved from death by the substitution of an animal in their stead. At the end of the play Clytemnestra asks, "if my daughter is saved, where is she?" She then raises the question, are the stories we tell of divine intervention just tales meant to make us feel better about what really happened? That is the question, isn't it? Are all of our stories about divinity simply a poorly disguised wish projection? Or do they point to something deeper in the human condition that cannot be named any other way?