Homer’s Iliad has outlasted 3000 years, several empires and more retellings than anyone can count. In January it arrives at the Dunstan Playhouse with a cast of one, a double bass and not much else.
David Wenham (SeaChange, The Lord of the Rings) plays The Poet, a wry, world-weary figure condemned to retell the Trojan War until we finally lose our appetite for it. He has been at it a long time, across battlefields, trenches and ruined cities, and tonight he has had enough. Tonight he wants the story to end.
Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s adaptation of Homer takes the oldest war story in the Western canon and hands it to a man standing in front of us in a room. Ancient myth runs straight into the present tense. Time Out New York called it “shocking, glorious, primal and deeply satisfying”; the Sydney Theatre Company season sold out, and Wenham returns to the role here, directed by Damien Ryan, artistic director of Sport for Jove.
Wenham trained for the stage and had planned a theatre career before television took him elsewhere. He has been wanting to come back.
“It’s a cracking story, based on the greatest epic poem ever, The Iliad,” he says. “I had an itch to return to the theatre that needed to be scratched. I trained for the theatre and that’s where I came from. My career took a left-hand turn very early. I don’t think there’s been a better time during my life that there’s been a need for this story to be told. It’s an amazing adventure, but it’s also a wonderful examination of who we are, what makes us human, and whether there’s anything we can possibly change about ourselves to make life on this planet a little bit better.”
His only company on stage is Helen Svoboda, a Finnish-Australian double bassist, vocalist and composer who spent 2018 to 2020 studying in the Netherlands and Germany, specialising in solo double bass composition. Every sound in the production comes from her: the bass, her voice, and a little flute. It isn’t what most people expect a double bass to be capable of, and it does the work that sets, lighting rigs and casts of thirty usually do.
Between them, Wenham’s presence and Svoboda carry an audience back to the plains outside Troy with almost nothing in the way of props. Storytelling stripped back to its oldest form – one person talking – and a case for empathy in a world that hasn’t stopped fighting.
An Iliad
Adaptation by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare. Produced by Sydney Theatre Company
29 Jan – 18 Feb 2027
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
Tickets: statetheatrecompany.com.au
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