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by Robert Hurwitt "The Road to Hades" is paved with good intentions. The new comedy by Jeff Raz that opened Sunday in John Hinkel Park as part of Shotgun Players' season of world premieres is a clown-commedia mashup about the need to end war and all its attendant horrors. Intentions don't get much better than that. It also comes festooned with some impressive talents, including playwright-performer Raz - a notable comic performer with every outfit from the Pickle Family Circus and Cirque du Soleil to TheatreWorks, and founder of the Clown Conservatory - and San Francisco Mime Troupe leading light Velina Brown. Not to mention the ancient Greek master of comedy Aristophanes, who is practically a co-author. But "Hades" isn't much of a play. Raz's script plays like a thin scenario loosely connecting some sharp comic interchanges (including scenes from Aristophanes), serious commentary and comic-vamp songs by composer-trombonist Johannes Mager. As good as some moments are, others beg to be filled in with clown or other physical-comedy business that neither Raz nor director Sabrina Klein has devised. The skeletal story starts in Hades, the ancient Greek realm of the dead (except those the gods have condemned to eternal punishment in the netherworld of Tartarus). As his large company continues rehearsing and doing acrobatics around him, Aristophanes (Raz) yearns to make a comeback with antiwar comedies for a democracy - ours - being undermined by protracted warfare, just as his Athens was. Ares (John Mercer), god of war, and the messenger god Hermes (Ryan O'Donnell) arrive, sent by Zeus (a thunder sheet behind cardboard clouds) to find somebody who could be the new god of peace. Most of the rest of the play follows Aristophanes' efforts to get himself the job or to support the formidable Aphrodite (Brown), goddess of love, who claims the title as her own. (Actually, Eirene was the Greek goddess of peace, but "make love, not war" has a familiar ring.) In both quests, Aristophanes manages to restage bits of the major antiwar comedies he wrote during the 27-year Peloponnesian War (which ended Athenian democracy), including his first hit, "The Acharnians" and the now seldom-seen "Peace." For his everlastingly popular - and always timely - "Lysistrata," Aphrodite takes the role of the woman who leads a sex strike for peace. It's counterintuitive casting, but in Brown's hands and bluesy songs it works very well. Raz, Brown and other cast members cut through the comedy at times with acute reminders of the peripheral damage of war - a discomfiting Abu Ghraib tableau, accounts of post-traumatic stress or a sock-puppet tale of child rape and prostitution. But in between its sporadic effective moments, the script keeps meandering and doubling back on itself. The large, personable cast, including several deft child acrobats, is left with too little to do in terms of dialogue, character definition or action. Andrea Weber's choreography is minimal, except for a clever tango battle between Ares and Aphrodite. Mercer, Tristan Cunningham and Larissa Garcia fill their comic bits admirably when given a chance. But only Raz and Brown have the presence to command a stage without much help from an author, and Aphrodite is inexplicably absent for too long in the first act. The destination is a worthy one, but "The Road to Hades" is a bumpy ride with a few happy or intriguing stops along the way. |
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