.png)
PRESS: Gloucester Productions presents Peterson and O’ Hare’s AN ILIAD at the Baxter
- Feb 18
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 25
Baxter Theatre Centre
AN ILIAD is a reminder that the oldest stories still know us better than we think. Alan Committie returns to The Baxter playing “the poet” in AN ILIAD, from 25 February to 14 March 2026.
AN ILIAD brings Homer’s legendary tale crashing into the present - not as a museum piece, but as a living, urgent act of storytelling. In this stage work, a single Poet and the Muse (played by Charl Johan Lingenfelder) summon the Trojan War in real time, asking a simple, unsettling question: why do we keep telling this story - and why do we keep living it?
The award-winning Alan Committie stars in this off broadway play, directed by Geoffrey Hyland, with a formidable creative team, which includes a newly created soundscape by Charl Johan Lingenfelder, costumes by Michaeline Wessels and lighting by Luke Ellenbogen. The stripped-back, electrifying production embraces a stark visual language and a single evolving costume, allowing the performer to shift seamlessly between ancient warrior, contemporary witness and exhausted storyteller. The Muse’s live score becomes both companion and conscience - a voice that remembers when words fail.
Moving fluidly between narration, character and reflection, AN ILIAD unfolds like a modern ritual. Heroes appear and vanish in a single breath. Music pulses, fractures, mourns and drives the story forward.
“This is not a polite, distant epic,” says director Geoffrey Hyland. “It is immediate, human, darkly funny, brutal and tender. You don’t need to know Homer. You don’t need to love epics. You only need to be human.” He continues, “At its heart, An Iliad explores the cost of rage, the seduction of violence and the fragile hope that memory might stop us repeating the same mistakes - even as history proves otherwise.”
The production runs at the Baxter Flipside from 25 February to 14 March 2026 at 19:30 with Saturday matinees at 15:00 and is 95 minutes long. Booking is now open at Webtickets online or at Pick n Pay stores. For discounted block bookings, fundraisers and charities, contact Carmen Kearns via email at carmen.kearns@uct.ac.za.