Wed. April 22

 The A.R.T. is premiering, “Trojan Barbie,” the new play by English-born, Austrilian native Christine Evans at the Zero Arrow Theatre and its last night is tonight April 22. It’s based, to a degree, on Euripides’ “Trojan Women,” but in somewhat typical A.R.T. fashion it’s not about history, about staying in one time zone or one mindset. No, “Trojan Barbie” follows A.R.T. ace actor Karen MacDonald, playing Lotte, a meek British woman on a holiday tour, in Troy. She’s a doll-maker by trade, timid by nature. She is thrust into not a Troy of today but a Troy of the Trojan War, where she spends time in a detention camp for women, including Helen (“just Helen,” says actress Careena Melia, when being introduced), Hecuba, (Paula Langton) Polly X (the rebel punk of the group, played by Kaaron Briscoe), Cassandra (Nina Kassa) and others. Lotte wanted to see some history; she wasn’t quite prepared to time-travel back to be part of it. Well, who would? In a chat with the A.R.T.’s outgoing director Gideon Lester, Evans says, “I’m not interested in simply taking a play and dressing it in modern clothes without creating a real dialogue between the past and the present.”
No, she isn’t. That dialogue isn’t always easy to follow, nor is the action. Where are we? Where are they? are questions that may float through your mind. (Evans has also called the play “a modern car-crash encounter with Euripides.”) Best advice: Accept the dislocation and realize the one thing that will be with us always is war and the brutality it brings. So, it’s hard not to see the bloodshed taking place in front of us (3000 years ago) as an allegory to contemporary war. (Name your country.) And there’s the particular suffering of the women, of course. Great line, from Polly X, trying to experience life: “I don’t care about history. It’s just full of dead people. I want to live!” There’s multiple ironies there … The soliders have something in mind for Polly that’s not going to be terrribly pleasant.
You have to be prepared to deal with a fair amount of non-linearity here, a certain almost perpetual dislocation. And some serious, heavy stuff, albeit heavy stuff sprinkled with some comic, or at least, ironic moments. (One woman, the night we went, exited the play saying, “I thought it would be more pop culture.” Given the title, maybe, but … )
Of note, the sonic effects: Between acts, there’s a crashing noise that reminds one of “Law & Order.”
Performances Tues-Sun. through April 22. Check the website below for the particular days at set times (nights are 7:30 and 8, with weekend matiness at 2). Tickets: $52-$22.

Corner of Arrow street and Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-547-8300 www.amrep.org