In his tragic triptych Bash: Latter Day Plays, prolific US playwright and lapsed Mormon (a.k.a the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), Neil LaBute revisits the familial and social atrocities of Greek legend and explores how they might recur in modern America.

Thus Medea Redux finds a woman murdering her child to avenge herself against its father, A Gaggle of Saints characterises Orpheus as a middle-aged gay man in the underworld of a Central Park ‘Men’s Room’ where he is beaten up by a gang of clean-cut All-American boys attending a ‘bash’ en-route to university, and Iphigenia in Orem …

Perhaps I should be more circumspect in describing Iphigenia in Orem because this, on its own, is currently playing in a Wellington hotel room (Quality Hotel, Cuba St). But it is relevant to recall that Iphigenia was sacrificed to the goddess Artemis so her father, Agamemnon, could sail to war.

For this Stuart Handloff-directed rendition, performed by Ryan Richards, we are taken to the actual setting, a hotel room, where a salesman chats to us as if we were the lone drinker he found in the almost deserted bar (of a Las Vegas hotel) and brought upstairs for a nightcap.

The drink – red wine – is offered (thanks for that). But strangely, instead of arranging us around the room so that the Man’s movement and actions can be relatively naturalistic, we are seated in two rows facing the bed, end-on theatre-style. Why be site specific if you are not going to use it to best advantage?

Perhaps because of our contrived physical relationship, Richards resorts to quite a lot of gesturing which just makes him look like an actor (or a TV reporter or an Italian or a Bronx American …) and detracts from our belief in him as a church-going family man from Utah (home of the Mormon church; Orem is a city of Utah).

That said, Richards does have an intelligent understanding of his role and a compellingly steady way of delivering the Man’s seemingly discursive tale, which turns out to be a confession. He needs to talk to a stranger and we are it. And cast in the role of Confessor, we are inexorably drawn in by the ‘what would I have done?’ and ‘what should I do with this information?’ questions. In peeling away the layers LaBute demonstrates, once more, what a very clever dramatist he is.

The theme is sacrifice, but not in the normal Christian sense. The provocation for what has happened involves a perceived threat to the material wellbeing of a senior salesman-turned-manager, and his wife and family. Materialism is key. So to is the nature of masculine ‘play’ – one-upping practical jokes, etc.  

Credibility is all and while this production ensures we ‘get it’ objectively, more could be done to seduce us into accepting our role as silent listener, casual friend and complicit withholder of knowledge. The final revelation needs to hit us in the solar plexus and – on the opening night, anyway – it didn’t.
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