NEW YORK —  Director Tina Landau knows how to do bold.

Her take on Charles Mee's "Iphigenia 2.0" is aggressive, in-your-face theatrical, a startling, ambitious re-examination of the Euripides classic done in modern dress and sporting an up-to-the-minute sensibility that suggests today's Iraq conflict as much as it does antiquity's Trojan War.

The play, the first production in the Signature Theatre Company's season-long salute to Mee, has been directed by Landau with a fierceness that makes every one of its 85 minutes count.

No moment is wasted as a determined troupe of actors retells the tale of Agamemnon's indecision _ his dithering over whether to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to prove his commitment to waging war with Troy. Tom Nelis plays Agamemnon with a weary insecurity, a man overwhelmed by momentous events.

The other Greek soldiers, dressed in present-day army fatigues, doubt Agamemnon's sincerity. They act as a kind of chorus, egging him on. So does Menelaus, husband of the seductive Helen, the woman who precipitates the epic combat.

Put duty ahead of private feelings, says Menelaus, portrayed by Rocco Sisto as a medal-bedecked military man, whose outfit would not be out of place in the corridors of the Pentagon.

The soldiers will not sail for Troy "unless you make a sacrifice that means as much to you as their lives mean to them," says one of the troops destined for battle.

On the other side of the argument stands Achilles, Iphigenia's uneasy intended, and, more emphatically, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia's protective mother. Kate Mulgrew has a plummy, upper-crust voice that streaks her pantherlike performance as Clytemnestra with a purr of sensuality. And Seth Numrich projects a boyish charm as the distraught Achilles, a young man fully aware of the blood that inevitably will be shed.

The calmest person on stage happens to be Iphigenia herself, portrayed with a cool clarity by Louisa Krause. Once she realizes what is expected of her father and herself, Iphigenia embraces her martyrdom with the single-mindedness of a true believer. Is this what modern suicide bombers are made of?

But then, current headlines reverberate throughout the play. Empires "are brought down finally not by others but by themselves, from the actions that they take, that they believe are right or good or necessary at the time to do," muses Agamemnon in the opening moments of the evening.

Mee's dialogue is equally contemporary. Iphigenia's handmaidens sound like valley girls. His soldiers' yearn for canned tuna, beef jerky, mouthwash, porn magazines and marijuana. And Anita Yavich's costumes, particularly for Clytemnestra, scream Mediterranean chic.

The action is played out on designer Blythe R.D. Quinlan's barren, appropriately uninviting setting, presided over by an ancient Greek (Angelo Niakas) who watches the tragedy unfold.

"Ruin, it would seem, is inherent in the nature of empire," Agamemnon says at one point. Maybe so, but it also makes for exemplary theater.

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