Hellas Reviews
Stage and Cinema- Recommended
"...Ancient drama gets short shrift here in Los Angeles. Sure, we get the stories, but the shows are usually adaptations, hardly ever a straight translation, and when we do, they're performed in today's style. In 2018, The School of Night did something radical: they performed Seneca's Hercules Insane as written and with the actors wearing masks. It was a tiny, no-budget production at Hollywood Fringe that hardly anybody saw, but it felt so fresh that I've longed to see more historically-informed productions ever since. They're back with a new day-long festival play set in the world of ancient Greece, Hellas, by Christopher William Johnson, at the Broadwater for a painfully short four-week run."
Night Tinted Glasses- Highly Recommended
"...Hellas is their latest, and frankly, their best so far. The time is the fifth century BCE, and the mighty empire of Darius the Great (Thomas Bigley) has sent ambassadors to the two most prominent city states of Hellas (Greece)--Sparta and Athena (Athens). Here we have our three points of an epic story. I do not use that word lightly, for this is "epic" the way Game of Thrones and House of Dragons is epic, even if we meet zero dragons."
Stage Raw- Somewhat Recommended
"...Clocking in at five hours and 45 minutes, Hellas is nothing if not ambitious. Written and directed by Christopher William Johnson, the play draws from the writings of Herodotus, Aeschylus's The Persians, and other classical sources. It endeavors to tell the sweeping story of the Greco-Persian Wars-from the rise of the Hellenic city-states and the development of Athenian democracy to the eventual defeat of the Persian Empire. Unfortunately, ambition alone does not justify the runtime, and Hellas ultimately struggles under the weight of its own scope and scale."
Larchmont Buzz- Highly Recommended
"...With their new production of the epic Hellas, theatergoers will have the opportunity to experience performance as it was done in Ancient Greece: an all-day affair filled with spectacle, masks, music, period costumes and astonishing fight choreography."
Broadway World- Recommended
"...School of Night's, HELLAS, is quite a history lesson. And it is as fascinating as the symbolic resonance of courage, sacrifice and resistance against overwhelming odds, that the Battle of Thermopolae itself inspired. By default, the play examines the birth of Democracy which has a lot of downside in critical moments as it does benefits."