Rumours of War
World Stage gets small to approach big
by Beat Rice
Ajax & Little Iliad Produced by Evan Webber and Frank Cox-O’Connell and Harbourfront Centre (as part of Worldstage) Created and Performed by Evan Webber and Frank Cox-O’Connell
Ajax & Little Iliad is a two part original Canadian work that explores theatre of war and political theatre. Each of the one-act plays draws from stories of Ancient Greece, making reference to real historical events as well as mythology. Little Iliad comes first in the programme, followed by Ajax.
Little Iliad proves that you can stage a conversation that is delivered in an everyday kind of way that is engaging and interesting. The play is a Skype conversation between two old friends, presented uniquely. An intimate audience of 30 enters the space through the backstage area to find riser seating on the Enwave stage facing downstage. Masking blocks off the space and all we see is a table with a laptop and some clay figurines. The conversation is cleverly staged with Evan as the only ‘real’ actor who is physically in front of us, and Thom, a man on the other side of the Skype conversation who is visible through a tiny projection on the white clay models. All of the audience members have individual headphones in which we can clearly hear every word, breath and stutter of the two characters. It is like having an actor in your ear. It was for me, a completely new way of experiencing theatre. You are a close observer of what starts off as a friendly conversation, which becomes an exchange of story-telling that develops into role-play, and concludes in a mini eruption over the justifications of war. We hear the insights of an artist and of a soldier, and in the end we don’t, or at least I didn’t feel the need to pick a side.
