The Epic of Gilgamesh on stage

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH ON STAGE in Brooklyn, NY:

Theater Review (NYC): Immortal: The Gilgamesh Variations

Author: Jon Sobel — Published: Jan 22, 2011 at 8:07 pm (StageMage)

The wooden staircase you climb to get to the Bushwick Starr theater has more character than some entire plays. You're rewarded for the climb—through January 30, anyway—with a strenuous, rewarding journey through the ancient Sumerian-Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest works of literature in history. Sumerian legends told of a semi-divine hero-king, Gilgamesh, who tyrannized his subjects in the city of Uruk until they pleaded with the gods for help. In response they created Enkidu, a primitive man of great strength who lived in the forest with the beasts until being seduced by a temple harlot into coming to Uruk to be a companion to Gilgamesh.

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But here they are, and a fine lot too. The Forge enlisted eleven playwrights to each adapt one of the eleven main tablets for the stage. Director Gabriel Shanks, together with a solid cast and a talented production team, stitched them together into a real theatrical epic. The shifts from one playwright's voice to the next can be heard, usually subtly but now and then joltingly. As the company presumably intended, these shifts add to the effectiveness of the episodic story, offering changes in tone (elegiac and hilarious, solemn and boisterous, cerebral and physical). The program's trendy reference to the production as a "remix" is going a bit far; though it takes liberties with details of characterization and setting, in outline it hews to the story as written, and properly so. Audiences aren't terribly familiar with the Epic of Gilgamesh, which therefore doesn't seem to call for radical reinterpretation. Much of the staging here feels as if it could have been transplanted from, say, Greek drama. I suspect, though, that on a second viewing, once familiar with the story, one would better appreciate the multiple creative points of view.

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Earlier stage productions are noted here and here.