Troy, written by Tom Wright and showing at the Malthouse Theatre, is symbolic of all bloody conflicts between people bound by identity. Audiences are transported back to the 12th century BC, when gods moved among mortals, wars raged without mercy, and no soul was spared the violence of fate. Sounds familiar. Troy is on the brink of destruction; the horror of the relentless engine of war can be seen on our screens today.

A contemporary reframing of Greek epics, myth, and history

Tom Wright is renowned for his reimagining of Greek classics such as Homer’s The Odyssey and Euripides’s Women of Troy. It is brought to life by director Ian Michael, known for Picnic at Hanging Rock and Stolen. This contemporary retelling of Troy is unlike anything seen before.

Wright told Neos Kosmos that “it would be misleading of him to suggest this is faithful to the Iliad or any of the other sort of Hellenic literary traditions.”

“The context for [the play] began with what’s happening in Ukraine,” Wright said, also noting the relevance for Greeks.

“Once you go through the Hellespont, you’re into that part of the world, then that’s in many ways the fulcrum for this idea because it is a very sort of Greek idea.”

For the playwright, there is the real and bloody affair of “Brothers and sisters, who can live in complete opposition and ideological hatred of each other, who are engaged in a war to the end.”

He adds, “Troy feels very appropriate in cities such as Sebastopol, and Mariupol, which have Greek names.”

His work draws analogies to Troy because Australia’s national identity, dating back to the First World War.

“Australia’s identity has been so deeply tied to Anzac Cove and Gallipoli [where Troy was] and what took place there.

“It feels especially salient that Australia’s national story, at least as framed by conservative nationalist ideology, is rooted in that cove, in that region, which if extended outward connects to a broader Western tradition whose own foundation myth is the great siege, conflict, and invasion at Troy,” Wright said.

The Australian context may be a starting point, but it is never explicit in the script: “It’s just the contextual.”

The work progresses across 15 scenes, drawn from “some of the key moments of Homer’s work and myth.”

“It ranges from Iphigenia’s self-sacrifice, all the way through to the final scene, which will be the murder of Agamemnon by his wife.”

Every scene Wright said, “will be familiar to Greek audiences, who know their stories”, but are sifted through the sieve of a contemporary lens.

The faces of hunger and war remain the same regardless of the era, Troy, Ukraine, Yemen, or Gaza. In Homer’s epic, the Greeks reduce Troy to ashes. For both Homer and Euripides, there are no clear heroes or villains; both sides have blood-soaked hands.

Lemnos to Anzac Cove: History, mythologising of blood, and identity

Regarding World War I, Gallipoli, or as the Greeks know it, Kallipoli (Καλλίπολη), for the diaspora in Australia must sanctify the island of Lemnos as hallowed ground, part of a blood sacrifice. Blood sacrifice itself has become part of the national identities of Greece, Australia, Turkey, and others, a problematic notion.

“It’s interesting as Lemnos, it’s a very important island, obviously, in Australia and the Lemnian community, is one of the most noble of the Australian Greek sub-communities,” said Wright.

Wright points to Philoctetes (Φιλοκτήτης), who in Greek mythology was a renowned archer and a key figure in Homer’s Iliad. Philoctetes, according to myth, was abandoned on Lemnos after being bitten by a snake, only to be later recalled by the Greeks to aid in their campaign.

“Philoctetes is living in isolation on the barren hills of Lemnos, in fact, a little islet off Lemnos, which was an open-air altar to Philoctetes, where all of old weapons, sailors passing, would leave their weapons,” Wright said.

Lemnos Wright said, simultaneously a long way away from Troy yet close in the sailing sense.

“It is in an Australian theme about one of the sources of the great Australian complacency, and it’s been a source of great safety to many of us.

“Our distance from the rest of the world is one reason so many people have come to Australia over the past 200 years. That isolation has fostered a sense that what happens elsewhere is far away, and therefore, easy to ignore.”

Wright describes a scene where the “women of Troy sit around and almost like Australian affluent housewives on Bondi Beach, talking about how war ‘will never come to us and we’re blessed and we’re a lucky country’ and all of this kind of notion.”

“The irony is that absolute cataclysm is about to fall on their heads,” he said.

He wanted the play to be “analogous” so that “the thinking audience member or even the feeling audience member can sit there and say, ‘Oh, this is just like’.”

Over his career, Wright has carved out what he calls a niche in Greek myth and storytelling. “The truth is that I’m filling the niche I find myself fitting into a niche given to me, going right back for most of the 30-odd years of my career, I’ve found myself being guided into projects.”

Wright began over 30 years ago with Anthill Theatre, a Melbourne company under the direction of Jean-Pierre Mignon (1980–1994), which focused on classic European drama in experimental productions.

“Anthill under Jean-Pierre Mignon were instrumental in shattering the Anglocentric view of what Australian theatre should be.

“It was an acknowledgement that people who’ve come from overseas bring not just ideas and histories, but also forms and ways of being.”

Wright said he absorbed that “ideology” early on, “back in days, back when multiculturalism wasn’t such a problematic term.”

“The idea that actually multiculturalism was a way for us to solve our post-colonial dilemma, it’s partly that, and it’s partly just my interest, and what I like.”

For Wright, theatre is “a poetic form but in Australia and in the Anglo system, it tends to be a psychological form. I’m not psychological.”

Humanity, and war as perpetual violence

Alcibiades, the young general of the Peloponnesian War, used rhetoric to persuade the Athenians to invade Melos, which sided with Sparta. The Athenians turned Melos to ashes, murdered all its males over 13 and enslaved its women.

Euripides’s Trojan Women, 415 BCE, denounced the Athenian invasion of Melos and gave voice to Troy’s grieving women as a metaphor for Melos. In 2007, Wright’s Women of Troy reimagined this lament for modern audiences, drawing parallels between ancient ruins and the devastation of Iraq, Syria, and beyond. Troy continues this lineage, making war’s cycles disturbingly present.

“That’s one of the great lessons that any student of Greek history can tell you,” Wright said, “is that the way in which a city-state administers itself and elects itself and rewards the privileges of its nobility is one thing, that how it behaves as an imperial force over the seas is another matter.”

“Athens, the place where democracy was invented and should never be taken lightly, is an enormously important idea. Yet, the way in which internal civic conflict was resolved within Athens is still, to this day, one of everybody should be studying it.

Wright emphasises that Athens, or for that matter, Spartan, or any modern democracy, can also “act like any other mercantile or imperialist or adventurous forces, outside the realms of the voting public”.

“Democracies do terrible things at times, you know, and the truth of that, of course, of the matter, as it was true of fifth century Athens as it is from today, is that both things are true simultaneously.

“You can have the ultimate epitome of civilisation, but you can also have the epitome of barbarity in the two things lie hand in hand.

“Troy tries to talk about is that obviously the unspoken narrative in the play is what’s happening in Gaza, but I never refer to Gaza.

“You would have to be a fool not to look at a play about people who share a language, share a faith, share a system, fundamentally imperceptible from each other in the street and yet have a lifelong, ancient eon’s old hatred, which cannot be resolved, generated hatred.”

The Malthouse stage itself plays a role. Wright said he uses the venue’s “lovely barn-like space, which lends itself to larger epic style.”

He avoided “the horrors of Grand Guignol style violence” noting, “there’s nothing more tedious on stage than watching actors try to realistically replicate violence.”

“I’ve asked the director and the crew to think about the business of war and what it is when Achilles and Hector fight, I don’t think we need to see sort of choreographed wrestling.

“We explore more symbolic and more sort of choreographic ways of representing the core acts of violence in the piece. They’re not going to be shied away from, but then I’m not going necessarily for the visceral until the very end.”

Characters contradict themselves and each other. “There are vivid versions of history. I’ve gone with a version where Achilles dies at the end, there are so many versions, almost every character both dies and doesn’t die.”

Helen, Wright notes, is “both human and not human. These are liminal, simultaneously supernatural and natural characters.”

“In the end as we all know,” Wright said, “Ancient Greeks really didn’t distinguish in myth.”

Through Troy, Tom Wright asks us to witness not just a city’s fall, but the enduring cycles of war and violence between brothers and sisters, and the spark of hope that may survive within them.

*Troy is on at the Malthouse now until September 25