Prometheus Bound (review)

When she arrived at the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) in 2009, Diane Paulus brought along her hit New York production of The Donkey Show, an effervescent musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream that turned the A.R.T.'s second performance space into Club Oberon every night. Audience members stood in the open space facing the stage, but soon found themselves immersed in the action as the dance floor became the main playing area and pop music blared from countless speakers surrounding the club's periphery. Paulus applied this same concert-like atmosphere and immersive staging to the latest inhabitant of Oberon, a rock musical version of Prometheus Bound. With book and lyrics by Steven Sater (the Tony Award-winning lyricist of Spring Awakening), music by Serj Tankian (lead singer of the rock band System of a Down), and direction by Paulus, the project seemed to be in the hands of a team ideally suited for adapting Aeschylus's play of mythic defiance to the twenty-first century. Given the pedigree of the creative team and a cast of actors with impressive Broadway credentials, it is unsurprising that the anticipation surrounding a new musical from the people who had rocked the theatre scene with their previous projects—Paulus with the revival of Hair and Sater with Spring Awakening—was substantial. In addition, the A.R.T.'s partnership with Amnesty International to promote social justice through performances of the show promised an evening of powerful and engaging theatre. The potential evident on paper, however, was never quite matched in performance, and the promotion of Prometheus as a larger metaphor for contemporary human rights issues ultimately took precedence over the quality and consistency of the artistic elements.

In his program note, Sater described the play as "perhaps the most searing indictment of tyranny ever written," and an atmosphere of rebellion clearly bubbled beneath the surface in the opening moments of the production. Lining the stage for the first number, "The Hounds of Law," the cast donned blindfolds and nooses, simulating a kind of self-hanging as they sang of rampant political oppression with an intensity that matched the volume of the onstage rock band. But the defiant tone that began the show quickly transitioned into an angst-ridden meditation on epic suffering. Instead of creating opportunities in his music to further develop Aeschylus's original characters or explore dramaturgical nuances, Sater's limited lyrics offered repetitive commentary on an already well-established story. In "Nothing Like a Tyrant's Gratitude," nearly half of the lines in the song were simply a recitation of the title, and this pattern continued through much of the show's score. Sater's penchant for lyrical repetition as a means of enforcing his politically driven interpretation of the play made his message redundant rather than relevant. Likewise, his overly concise script traded meaning and poetry for functionality in an effort to provide a vehicle for the anthem-like musical production numbers.

Emmanuel Avellanet (Groupie), Gavin Creel (Prometheus), and Ashley Flanagan, Celina Carvajal, and Jo Lampert (Daughters of the Aether) in Prometheus Bound. (Photo: Marcus Stern.)

As with Sater's libretto, the attempts by Paulus and the rest of her creative team to equate mythic martyrdom with present-day social injustices were unevenly executed. For example, when the story turned to the plight of disobedient Prometheus (Gavin Creel), the staging drew direct parallels to infamous acts of war and torture. Over the course of the show, the disgraced titan was electrocuted through a metal headpiece, beaten with a baseball bat, strung up on the balcony railings, and subsequently restrained on his knees with a dog collar around his neck and chains attached to his wrists, imagery that evoked everything from Christ's Crucifixion to the widely circulated photographs of practices at Abu Ghraib. Yet these very specific references to persecution and personal sacrifice seemed in conflict with the self-indulgent punk...