Does Utopia Mark the Return of Epic Theater?
In poetry, where the concept originated, an epic "is a long narrative poem, on a grand scale, about the deeds of warriors and heroes" (J.A. Cudden). Gods should have been included as well.
Length is what the theater can appropriate from the epic, though even the longest play (except for some of Peter Brook's and Robert Wilson's follies) cannot compare in extent with the Iliad and Aeneid. It can have narrative aspects, especially in the now outmoded story theater, but it cannot concentrate and depend on narration.
The scale can be fairly grand, especially as in Wagnerian and some other operas, but the grander historic and cosmic elements refuse to squeeze themselves onto a stage. Brook's Mahabharata came across pretty puny. Warriors, heroes and gods can appear on stage, but heroic deeds only very sparingly, if at all.
But what about Bertolt Brecht's epic or non-Aristotelian theater? It was meant to appeal to the spectators' minds more than to their emotions, largely by means of the so-called alienation effect. This could involve narration by a commentator, slide or film projections, superscriptions and placards, a more presentational form of acting, insertion of songs, or alternative endings, sometimes voted on by the audience. It also predicated subjects of a social or political sort, which for Brecht meant a Marxist or leftist orientation. Yet Brecht himself emerged less dogmatic in practice than in theory.
For us, there remains the matter of length. Prime examples would be David Edgar's six-hour adaptation of Dickens' The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby and The Coast of Utopia, three related plays that can be viewed in one, two, or three installments. Nickleby, as with some Eugene O'Neill plays, was presented with a dinner break, as were the complete plays of Synge presented last summer by the visiting Druid Theatre of Ireland, although those were unrelated plays united only by common authorship.
What the long play—epic, if you will—must achieve is thrust and suspense; involvement with one or two major characters and an urge to find out what happens to him, her or them. How, in other words, does he, she or they end up?
A strong protagonist is mandatory. In Nickleby, there was the eponymous hero holding it all together—sympathetic in the writing and perhaps even more so in Roger Rees' performance. Others, such as Smike, mattered too, but they mattered especially in how they affected Nicholas, with whom it was easy to empathize.
No such thing obtains in Utopia. In "Part One: Voyage," the radical thinker and journalist Alexander Herzen (Brian F. O'Byrne) is far from being the central character. In "Part Two: Shipwreck," he is, albeit not a terribly charismatic one. In "Part Three: Salvage," his hold on the center is tenuous: His friend Ogarev and Ogarev's wife, who becomes his mistress, and even the novelist Turgenev and the anarchist Bakunin, seriously encroach on his centrality. So, finally, no one attains heroic stature.
Of course the real protagonist of the trilogy is History and the tricks it plays on us. And history, on the stage, turns into a pageant, a passing parade, without the poetry of a Homer or Virgil to endow a protagonist with heroic dimensions.
There may be exceptions. When the play's hero is someone we know well from history (e.g., Napoleon), legend (e.g., St. Francis), myth (Heracles) or fiction (Captain Ahab), some extratheatrical accretions proffer epic status.
Yet what, in any case, is the future of epic theater? In an age when the privileged theatrical format has become 90 intermissionless minutes—TV-bred audiences cannot sit still very long—the long play can make it only rarely. As a curiosity, like a beached whale.