Greek Threnody

Men do not seek tragedy, but it lies in wait for them when they least expect it. They pursue fame, fortune and glory. They strive to found dynasties, subdue the earth, fathom the depths of the sea and the limits of space. In an instant of high-arching pride as men vault to these ambitious goals, fate fells them, and they return to the dust from which they came. The ancient Greek tragedies are cautionary tales of how men incur the wrath of the gods by trying to be gods.

These plays are timeless precisely because man is changeless. After more than 2,000 years, the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are the most scrupulously exact and eloquently moving accounts that Western man possesses of the nature of his destiny. Aeschylus' The Persians, which has been revived at Manhattan's St. George's Church, is one of the earliest of these tragedies (472 B.C.). Set before the tomb of Darius the Great shortly after the Battle of Salamis, in which the Persians were crushingly defeated by the Athenians, the play is a spoken song of lamentations, a threnody for the cruelly spent valor of Persia's princes and the fall of a mighty empire.

Aeschylus had fought at Salamis, as be had at Marathon where his brother was killed, and he knew war. While the play is intrinsically undramatic, it is a remarkable achievement, humanly speaking, in that a victor aches with the torment of the defeated, recounts the terrible battle deaths of the slain, shows their widows and mothers keening in desolate, inconsolable grief. It is a kind of reverse Henry V, as if Shakespeare had set his play in France after the Battle of Agincourt, put his words in the mouths of the tiny remnant of once-proud French survivors, and evoked the pain in a French mother's heart.

The church setting makes The Persians seem like a hushed memorial service for the dead of all wars. Despite an occasionally stilted phrase, the John Lewin free translation is fluent, vivid and clear. The cast performs with tender gravity, and Jacqueline Brookes, in particular, brings affecting dignity to the role of King Xerxes' mother, as does J.A. Preston as the bearer of unbearable news. Underscoring the dialogue like a chorus of tears is the santur music of Composer Nasser Rastegar-Nejad. If someone had commissioned a great poet-playwright to write a drama for a Moratorium Day, this would be it.

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