As for the play's toys in the Attic, the doll contingent constitutes an effective visual metaphor, with the dead of Troy represented by broken moppets dangled from a rod above the skewed wreckage of David Reynoso's brutalist set and the corpse of Hecuba's murdered grandson, Astyanax, stood in for by a shattered figurine not even Lotte can repair. But what has any of this to do with the half-century-old icon of Mattel? Evans might have made more of the parallels between plastic, empty-headed Barbie and Helen, the latter portrayed by Institute student Careena Melia as a Rita Hayworth type trailing classically inspired gowns and old-movie music. But she doesn't. In fact, Evans's Helen is smart enough to use her feminine wiles to score Perrier and aspirin from the troops and can't understand why her fellow captives do not.
Long-time Súgán Theatre Company honcho Carmel O'Reilly is at the helm of the striking production, which serves as a showcase for a talented Institute posse that also includes Nina Kassa as the luridly prescient Cassandra and Skye Nöel as a pearl-clad Mad Men–era Andromache. But Trojan Barbie remains less a fully thought-out cohesion than something you might find in the playwriting aisle of Ploys "R" Us.
Related:
Endgame at the ART, Spring awake, Bard in the USA, More 
- Endgame at the ART
"They give mirth astride of a grave," Beckett might just as well have written of Mankind. He did opine, in Endgame , that "nothing is funnier than unhappiness."
- Spring awake
Head to the American Repertory Theatre's Zero Arrow Theatre for the world premiere of Christine Evans's TROJAN BARBIE (March 28–April 22).
- Bard in the USA
"You know," Paulus observes, "we are the American Repertory Theatre, and we haven't spent a lot of time in the repertoire on American drama."
- Cracking the wise
I don’t know that David Mamet’s is a fine Romance , and it certainly doesn’t conjure love at first scene.
- Of myth and men
There is more pageantry than either Stalinism or Stoker in The Communist Dracula Pageant , Anne Washburn’s ambitious jumble of a Romanian-history play now in its world premiere from the American Repertory Theatre.
- Review: The Seagull, The Corn Is Green
The Seagull begins with a theatrical experiment — a brief symbolist drama dreamed by young Konstantin Treplev, who's struggling toward artistic expression while endeavoring to showcase his girlfriend and impress his actress mother.
- Balancing act
In Jean-Paul Sartre's play, Will LeBow and Karen MacDonald feel the earth move under their feet.
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Entertainment, Performing Arts, Theater, More
, Entertainment, Performing Arts, Theater, Theatrical Plays, Euripides, Paula Langton, David Reynoso, Karen MacDonald, Carmel O'Reilly, Rita Hayworth, Less
