Lantern Theater Company presents Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare's 'An Iliad'

What the title cannot convey is that this adaptation, a 105-minute monologue with music, not only shares the story, but makes the ancient tale of the Greek battle for Troy relevant to us today.

Outside of space and time

Director M. Craig Getting places the Lantern Theater production in an old theater. Designer Meghan Jones creates a backstage area with rough-hewn brick and stone walls, a rickety metal staircase, and the ropes of an old fly system, where a piano, a costume rack, and some old furniture are stored. Audience is on three sides, pretty much on this abandoned stage. Center stage are doors to the outside, from where The Poet (Peter DeLaurier) enters, seeking warmth on a cold night.

He’s apparently a contemporary of ours, but like the stage, looks worn down by time. “Every time I sing this song,” he explains, “I hope it’s the last time.” The believable implication is that he’s been telling The Iliad for over 2800 years with no end in sight. With a folksy, warm manner, DeLaurier — a longtime Lantern collaborator and People’s Light and Theatre Company resident company member — shares a story about the immensity of war in a way that’s intimate and personal.

Liz Filios joins him as The Muse, unspeaking but nevertheless expressive. She accompanies the story with many musical instruments (sometimes in unconventional ways, like using a bow on a cymbal’s edge), often uses set elements for percussion, and sings eerie vocalizations into a microphone, all providing a rich emotional soundscape for The Poet’s words. Moreover, Filios’s talent for listening with focus and intent helps amplify what we’re experiencing; as in her other local stage performances, she’s always active and involved. Without saying a word, she guides The Poet.

War, micro and macro

O’Hare and Peterson focus on specific events towards the 10-year-war’s end. They relate in vivid detail how Patroklus borrows Achilles’s armor and fights as him. They show Achilles’s bloody revenge on Trojan warrior Hector for his friend’s death, culminating in a frightening frenzy of bloodlust. But the most powerful moment is The Poet’s blunt recitation of all wars from Troy to the present. It’s a long list, and by that point the play has successfully impressed upon us that war isn’t abstract history, but rather an individual matter of life and death, repeated ad infinitum throughout human existence.

DeLaurier, one of Philadelphia’s most watchable actors, accomplishes all this with remarkable conviction, as we’ve come to expect. He even adroitly shifts to accommodate the show’s humor. The Poet quips early on about the Trojan War being sparked by fighting over legendary beauty Helen, “It’s always something, isn’t it?” Later, he asks, “That’s what we’ve all been thinking, right? ‘Give her back!’”

This modest play, which reduces our long history of war to less than two hours’s talk, invites us to imagine war’s triumphs and tragedies, the plights of mighty leaders and anonymous soldiers, and the grief of those left alive when the violence ends. Since America’s current conflicts seem both distant and endless, An Iliad is an ideal play for today — but we could say that at any time in our history.