Man vs. Power was Aeschylus' theme back in the 5th century B.C., and it's still relevant today in the new production of Prometheus Boundat the Getty Villa. As directed by Travis Preston, dean of the Cal Arts School of Theater, the play looks at the price Prometheus (Ron Cephas Jones) must pay for his crime of having stolen fire -- the divine spark of consciousness, really -- from the God Zeus.
To teach him a lesson, Zeus ties him to a mountaintop where, in the original Greek version, an eagle pecks away at his liver every day. In the updated and newly translated Getty version, Prometheus is strapped to a 23-foot-high steel wheel (designed by Preston and Efren Delgadillo Jr.), which calls to mind the Inquisition's rack and a Coney Island Ferris wheel.
Poor Prometheus spits out his defiance of Zeus from up there, refusing to compromise his beliefs despite the entreaties of the goddess Io (Mirjana Jokovic) and his friend Okeanos (Joseph Kamal). A compassionate twelve-person chorus also begs him to ask Zeus for forgiveness. Hero that he is, Prometheus sticks to his humanistic principles even in the face of additional pressure from Zeus, as conveyed by the messenger-boy Hermes (Michael Blackman).
Cephas Jones turns in a magnificent performance as the deeply suffering but ever-optimistic Prometheus, but the real star of the evening is the monumental five-ton wheel which dramatically symbolizes not just the wrath of the Gods but the immensity of the Cosmos itself.
A two-man band provides an undercurrent of percussive music (composed by Ellen Reid and Vinny Golia); Mira Kingsley and Ellen McCartney are responsible, respectively, for the effective choreography and costumes. Taken together with Anne Militello's dramatic lighting scheme, this production of an ancient and somewhat static Greek play comes to vibrant and compelling life.
