My favorite type of play is modern--newly written and I haven't seen it before--and deals with a serious current issue. When Dave and I discovered we'd missed "An Iliad" at the Utah Shakespeare Festival--a play of just that type--we hurried back down to Cedar City on September 22, 2018, to see it. We also ate supper at one of David's favorite restaurants in Southern Utah--Rusty's, up the canyon from Cedar City. Rusty's has an Old West feel, with moose and bear heads around its walls. It serves old standards like steak and ribs. A steak with mushrooms and sauteed onions--one of life's small pleasures that buffers big worries and hassles.
"An Iliad" was a one-man-play, starring Brian Vaughn, the Utah Shakespeare Festival artistic director. The muse, a woman with a violin, played haunting tunes to punctuate the drama. Vaughn's role was "the poet," telling stories from The Iliad, the Greek epic poem about the senseless, tragic war between Greece and Troy. The poet compared that war to all the senseless, tragic wars since. He mentioned Afghanistan, which has lingered on, with death after death, for so many years.
We attended a "briefing" on An Iliad by a SUU professor, who mentioned the symbolism of the lantern in the play, which is turned off at the end. I'm still thinking about that....
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