“Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus,
That brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.
Many brave souls of heroes did it send hurrying down to Hades…”

That is how Homer’s epic poem, The Iliad, starts. It is also the beginning of Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s adaptation of the poem for the stage – An Iliad. The English National Theatre of Israel staged this as their inaugural production in the summer of 2014, and it was so popular they brought it back in September 2015.

TLV1’s Laragh Widdess sat down with American actor Clayton Fox, who plays the bard (the only speaking role), ahead of the second run. He explains how he and Israeli director Yaniv Rosenblatt adapted the work, originally aimed at a US audience, for Israel, while avoiding some of the obvious pitfalls like dressing the bard in an IDF uniform.

Laragh then went to see the play in Jaffa, an ancient city that plays host to some Greek myths of its own, to see what an Israeli audience made of a piece highly critical of war.

Music:
Written and performed by Naomi Kern for An Iliad

Written and produced by Laragh Widdess