Many thanks to Sheila O’Malley at The Sheila Variations for posting on the stage play An Iliad, playing at The Court Theatre in Chicago. There are more video excerpts on YouTube (see the links shown at the end of the clip) about the play, definitely worth checking out.

Sheila links to a review by Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune (link is dead):

And thus this Poet makes very clear that while he is talking about one specific, 10-year conflict, the reason for such fights does not change with the passing years. “Helen’s been stolen,” he says, setting up his big tale. “And the Greeks have to get her back. There’s always something, isn’t there?”

Indeed there is always something. Usually some kind of personal affront. And just in case you still don’t get that point, Kane’s Poet rattles off a bravura list of pretty much every major war in the world from Troy to Afghanistan (Crimean, Mexican War of Independence, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera). In that moment — by far the most remarkable of a consistently fascinating evening — Kane’s lips start to move as if he were in the middle of an exorcism.