It is hardly surprising that Thornton Wilder, who found his immediate inspiration in the writers he admired and who turned to the Greeks as early as his third novel, "The Woman of Andros," should try to have his way with Alcestis….

["The Alcestiad"] is certainly inferior to the major Wilder plays, but it is interesting as an example of the playwright's work and as another variation on the Alcestis story.

Although "The Alcestiad" is called "A Play in Three Acts," it is clearly intended as a trilogy in the Greek sense, three plays united by a common theme…. In Act II we get the traditional Alcestis story, unhappily without the tension and ambiguity that Euripides gives to both the sacrifice and the acceptance of it. In Wilder, the minor characters fall all over one another for a chance to die for Admetus, but Alcestis claims the honor, after...