"As a veteran, I have encountered less aggressive versions of this weird
stereotype before, generally from people with extremely limited contact
with those who have served. Veterans could explain to Oates (and
Vlautin) that one of the defining features of modern warfare is the way
that critical decision-making responsibilities get placed on even
low-ranking soldiers. This novel exudes a mixture of contempt and
ignorance, sometimes leavened with condescending pity ('The war would be
fought by an American underclass').
At the very least, Carthage serves as a shining example of the
size of the civilian-military divide. Does this matter? Oates’s main
concern here is not Iraq. The war is a backdrop for philosophical
questions – the relationships between guilt and responsibility, belief
and fact – in the same way as Shakespeare used the Trojan war in Troilus and Cressida, to which Carthage refers directly. Shakespeare, however, made his military men complex.
It is as if Americans think the relative ignorance that even a serious
public intellectual such as Joyce Carol Oates displays about her
military is unrelated to her country’s inability to form a coherent war
policy. It is not."
~~~~
"Otherwise, the Trojans are presented as a dull bunch of muscle-bound
pin-ups. The Greek heroes, in contrast, come across as a hilariously
flawed bunch of egotists and fools.
Ian Hogg's Agamemnon bores everyone to death with his
platitudes; John Franklyn-Robbins's ancient Nestor keeps falling asleep
and snoring during the big speeches; Vincent Regan's overweight Achilles
is far too besotted with his pretty blond boyfriend Patroclus (Oliver
Kieran-Jones) to fight, while David Yelland's suavely plausible Ulysses
delivers noble-sounding speeches for the most devious ends.
There's also a wonderfully funny performance from Julian
Lewis Jones as a terminally stupid Ajax, and a spectacularly grotesque
one from Ian Hughes as that scabrous, poxy and in this performance
downright masochistic knave Thersites, who acts as the play's choric
commentator.
It's an absorbing drama, but you leave the theatre feeling
sullied by its morbidly mean-spirited view of human nature, as if a slug
had slowly crawled across your flesh."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/3654568/Dark-hearts-brilliantly-laid-bare.html
