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Somewhere near the heart of Mee’s collage method lies the paradox that theater is a very old art form that has to be made new every night. Here, he’s tried to bring Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis into the 21st century. First he ditches what no longer applies in our time, making Agamemnon’s need to sacrifice his daughter not the will of the gods, as in the original, but a demand of the troops he wants to lead to Troy. Then he starts embroidering. His version begins when Agamemnon (an admirably anguished Tom Nelis), jacket off and tie undone, steps to the edge of the stage and says, “I see that there are acts that will set an empire on a course that will one day bring it to an end.” As he goes on musing about how great powers destroy themselves, you sense the audience getting rattled, tense: The Iraq debacle makes this hit too close to home. Mee spent twenty years as a historian before getting serious about writing plays, and at moments like this, it shows. A Greek king describing what might be the downfall of his way of life or our own renders uncomfortably exact the idea that history repeats itself—or, if you’re feeling dramatic, that history is just a couple of plays that leaders of empires continually, unwittingly revive. Though Mee’s plays offer the illumination of a history lecture, they only rarely boast the concision. For better and worse, they’re more like transcripts of all the weird stuff that crossed your mind during class. — Jeremy McCarter

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Jeremy McCarter's Full Review (9/17/07)