In The Trojans, inspired by Homer’s Iliad, Johnny (Roger Casey, center) declares interscholastic war on crosstown rival Highland High for ostensibly luring away his girlfriend Heather (the musical’s Helen of Troy).
The Trojans is a spirited musical about disengaged hourly workers acting out fictionalized memories of their long-gone high school days. A joint presentation of Loading Dock Theatre and Nancy Manocherian’s the cell, the show, directed by Eric Paul Vitale, is inspired—to some extent, at least—by Homer’s Iliad. It’s also the latest entry in an expanding catalog of American plays set in Amazon warehouses (in this instance, a fictional facility in Carlton, a small North Texas town with two high schools).
“Her eyes, her hair, her smile, her voice / … My chest it hurt when she came close,” sings Daris (Arya Grace Gaston) about Heather, the Helen of North Texas High, whom he has just met.
When members of the packing-and-shipping staff discover their despised supervisor has left the premises (ostensibly for the rest of the shift), they set about entertaining themselves. The group has a repertory of oral legends built on things that happened to them and their friends at North Texas High (maximally fictionalized, no doubt, for dramatic effect). They sing and dance these scenes, cleverly utilizing workplace objects (hand trucks, boxes, duct tape, tape dispensers, etc.) as their props. For this ad hoc troupe, a mere phrase can trigger the performance of a well-loved version of something that happened (or might have happened) back in the day.
The play-within-the-play harks back to the era of Robocop and Miami Vice. Heather (Deshja Driggs) is the hottest teenage girl in town (and also the musical’s Helen of Troy). Johnny (Roger Casey) is star quarterback of the North Texas Trojans football team (and the musical’s Menelaus). They’re the school’s most popular couple, yet notably ill-matched. Other Homeric archetypes, refashioned as Texans, include: Keeley (Erin Treadway), the counterpart of Achilles; Lucas (Daphne Always), Patroclus; Sondra (Jen Rondeau), Cassandra; and Daris (Arya Grace Gaston), Paris.
Heather and Johnny have been coasting along, mindlessly satisfied in their puppy love; but there’s some dire handwriting on the wall. When Heather marvels over the beauty of a sunrise or dreams of visiting Italy, the self-important Johnny silences her, declaring himself “a little preoccupied, obviously!”
Heather: With what?
Johnny: Whad’ya mean with what? With the game!
Heather: What game?
Johnny: Whad’ya mean ‘what game’? The game!
Heather: There’s always a game, Johnny.
Lucas (Daphne Always) unwittingly becomes ensnared in warfare between the Trojans of North Texas High School and the rival Kings of Highland High in Loading Dock Theatre’s update of The Iliad.
Enter Daris, an artsy student from crosstown rival Highland High, easily engaging Heather’s eye. It’s not long before she decides to trade up in the romance department. Days before the season’s biggest football game, between the Trojans and the Kings of Highland High, Heather ditches Johnny for Daris and even transfers to Highland. These developments ignite schoolwide controversy among the Trojans and, in short order, the student bodies of North Texas and Highland High are engaged in interscholastic warfare precipitated by Heather’s treachery and Daris’s complicity.
Exacerbating the chaos is a sudden conflict between Johnny and Keeley, a Trojan running back (supposedly “the best in state, maybe the country … he hit a kid so hard he spun in the air like a helicopter”). Keeley flies into a rage when Johnny makes an insulting remark (unheard by the audience) about Keeley’s relationship with Lucas. As revenge, Keeley bows out of the big game, leaving Johnny to meet the Kings without his indispensable support.
The music, lyrics, and book of The Trojans are by triple-threat Leegrid Stevens, a Texas native who’s also a sound designer and, with Treadway, founder of Loading Dock. The theater company’s press materials characterize the show as “an original synthwave musical.” Synthwave—for those who are unaware—is an aesthetic inspired by pop culture of the 1980s. Synthpop musical artists favor driving rhythms, the distinctive sound of synthesizers, and lots of percussion. It’s a style that might well fire up bored workers on the assembly line of an Amazon plant.
Sondra (Jen Rondeau), Heather (Deshja Driggs), and Johnny (Roger Casey) are singing and dancing Trojans who represent, respectively, Homer’s Cassandra, Helen of Troy, and Menelaus.
Stevens’s playbill biography mentions that his stage works are often “written simultaneously with the sound design.” According to a note in the production script, the score of The Trojans employs “cassette tape loops and vintage analog synths,” with the aim of achieving “a weathered, VHS ’80s sound that isn’t exactly accurate to actual ’80s music but is instead an exaggerated, fantasized version of it.” (Sounds about right.) An energetic ensemble, under music and vocal direction by Deena Kaye, performs the score and Melinda Rebman’s choreography with roughhewn élan within the acoustic and spatial confines of the cell’s modest arena playing area.
Scenic designer Simon Cleveland has stacked packing boxes from floor to ceiling all around the walls of the storefront playhouse. In the intimate (or, frankly, crowded) playing space, the effect of all those boxes is oppressive, and the dreariness of the workers’ day-to-day experience palpable. When the cast members begin to sing and dance, however, their exuberant proximity to the audience seated around the tiny stage guarantees a number of moments of immersive joy.
Loading Dock Theatre’s production of The Trojans runs through April 26 at the cell theatre (338 W. 23rd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday. For tickets and information, visit thecelltheatre.org.
Playwright: Leegrid Stevens
Direction: Eric Paul Vitale
Scenic Design: Simon Cleveland
Costume Design: Ashley Soliman
Lighting Design: Christopher Annas-Lee
Sound Design: Will Watt
