Trojan Women (After Euripides)

This world-premiere retelling of Euripides' play about the long-term damage warfare can inflict captures the eye if not the heart. Adapted by Jocelyn Clarke and directed by Anne Bogart, the production certainly shows elegance and years of polish and spotlights one stupendous performance. But even as we watch Andromache's baby being carried up to the battlements from where he'll be hurled, our feelings are tempered by the magnificence of the locale's staircase and by a portion of the audience well within our sight.

The entrance of Poseidon (sans Athena in this version) quickly reminds us that Bogart's work is based in Suzuki/Viewpoints technique: The actors are barefoot, and their feet are energized, massaging the ground as the actors walk, which seems to infuse the actors with power from the ground up. As Poseidon, Brent Werzner displays a voice that could indeed stir up the ocean's waves as the actor delivers a scene-setting monologue. Barney O'Hanlon, who literally sets the scene with a pile of chairs, speaks and mimes as the eunuch Chorus (replacing the Trojan women of Euripides' chorus). But when Ellen Lauren appears as Hecuba, we're completely mesmerized. Lauren has a deep, rich voice, and she moves regally and with tremendous energy. Yet she works beyond her ample technique to become a devastated and devastating queen and matriarch.

Leon Ingulsrud makes a sturdy envoy Talthybius, nearly convincing us as well as the Troïdes that it's better to be a slave than dead. As the legendary stunner Helen, Katherine Crockett has a voice of range and power, and comedic abilities that give Helen a celebutante air. As the prophetic Kassandra, Akiko Aizawa moves with beauty and apparently feels moved; however, despite Kassandra's skill in always speaking the truth, the actor has a strong accent that causes at least these ears to pause and thus lag behind the dialogue.

Costumer Melissa Trn dresses the women in white columnar gowns, all but Helen's dirtied at the hems, and clothes the men as befits their characters' lines of work. Performing his original, scene-enhancing music of misery and foreboding, Christian Frederickson remains onstage throughout.

Presented by SITI Company with and at the Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades. Sept. 8-Oct. 1. Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m. (310) 440-7300. www.getty.edu.