Paul Sparer is a stuffed-shirt Ulysses who delivers his two lengthy disquisitions on degree and on time with imposing sonority. During the first, the satirical touch comes when Patrick Hines' gruff Agamemnon clearly doesn't suffer garrulity gladly and impatiently drums his fingers on the table.

William Larsen's Nestor is a tiresome Polonius gone even more senile. And Thayer David gives a masterly portrait of Ajax as a bloated, redfaced, blusterer who stammers over his plosives--all brawn and no brain.

Donald Davis' Achilles and Colgate Salsbury's Potroclus are smooth, beautifully adjusted performances. There is no attempt to hide their homosexuality; in fact, their spiritual and physical love is made quite obvious, yet without a trace of effeminacy--which is precisely right for the bravest of the Greeks and his protege. The comedy here lies in their identical wardrobes: whither thou goest, I will go; where thou Iodgest, I will lodge; and what thou wearest, I will wear.

The side-line role of Thersites functions as the Chorus in the play. For all his vilifying and blaspheming, he is the person who sees the truth and states it, that man had succumbed to warring, lechery, idiocy, and hybristic vainglory. Donald Harron is unforgettable in the part. But Landau may be unwise to make him pick his nose, hawk into a spittoon, and mix coffee cups with the slop; it is not easy for an audience to acknowledge the wisdom in the speech of a man with such repulsive personal habits.

The final touch of satire is a ripenorting skirmish in shoot-em-up Western style, with rifles cracking and artillery bombarding, with the Southern mansion blown to bits before our very eyes, and with Thersites treacherously shot dead in the back (as an echo of the earlier slaying of Hector).

Troilus can never be wholly successful in the theatre. But it remains more intriguing than some of Shakespeare's more mountable works. I advise you to do homework at least to the extent of reading the text, and then to visit this courageous production. You may not get another chance until the next centennial of the Civil War.