It’s the most foundational narrative in the western world: THE ODYSSEY, Homer’s epic tale of Odysseus’s ten-year journey home from the bloody decade-long Trojan war while wife Penelope waits and weaves. The Wizard of Oz, James Joyce’s Ulysses, HarryPotter, SpongeBob SquarePants and countless other tales owe something to the aptly named Homer. It would be hard to think of a narrative which does not involve such a journey, either psychological, metaphorical, spiritual, physical, fantastical, or just plain literal. THE AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER’S world premiere production has taken this sprawling, pre-eminent narrative and broken it down into bite- size pieces over three hours and two intermissions– and it remains thrilling and resonant!
Alejandra Escalante, Kate Hamill, Nike Imoru, and Wayne T. Carr in The Odyssey. Credit: Nile Scott Studios and Maggie Hall.
Kate Hamill’s refreshed and feminized adaptation of Homer’s Greek epic poem is immediately exciting, funny, horrifying, and accessible, losing none of its symbolic and psychological richness for all of the f-bombs. “What the flying f—?” exclaims one of three women narrators, commenters, actors– in multiple roles and a decidedly saltier oral tradition. The production is instantly alive as it zeros in on the traumatized Odysseus (a deeply sympathetic Wayne T. Carr) stumbling home from the bloodbath that was Troy to the long-suffering Penelope (Andrus Nichols whose performance grows in stature over the course of the play) fighting off gangs of suitors partying in the palace and hungry for her presumed-dead husband’s crown and kingdom.
This version finds Penelope less long-suffering and more inclined to succumb to political practicalities as well the attentions of her most persuasive wooer Amphinomus (Keshave Moodliar) who may be dashing but still angling. And this Queen is given a crucial moment when she bemoans the plight of women with no agency; even this queen has no power to choose. But she can weave and unweave–and there may be power in that…
Andrus Nichols and Wayne T. Carr in A.R.T.’s world-premiere production of The Odyssey. Credit: Nile Scott Studios and Maggie Hall.
In the meantime Odysseus is en route, racking up ruin as he goes, first outsmarting and slaying the one-eyed giant Polyphemus (Jason O’Connell, wonderful in multiple roles). The staging of Odysseus’s battle with this cyclops is terrifically simple and effective. Sound, light and shadow, and one single giant eye projected upstage do the trick. Downstage, those three women (Alejandra Escalante, Nike Imoru, and playwright Kate Hamill) now scamper about as adorable little white sheep–soon to be lamb chops. The audience giggles, and Odysseus proceeds to blind the big, one-eyed dope, antagonizing Polyphemus’s father the sea god Poseidon who unleashes storms and diabolical impediments to his journey home–
Members of the cast face Polyphemus in A.R.T.’s world-premiere production of The Odyssey. Credit: Nile Scott Studios and Maggie Hall.
–which leads him straight into the arms the witch Circe played by a predatory Kate Hamill. She nails the tone of this production with her wickedly funny and unsparing assault on our bedraggled hero, but not before she turns his crew into swine and cackles: “Men. Pigs. What’s the difference!” Hah! Odysseus and the rest of his warring Greeks have committed gruesome atrocities against their enemies. These war crimes gut Odysseus’s conscience and send him into spasms of despair after falling in love with Nausicaa (sweetly played by Alejandra Escalante) to whom he confesses the grotesquery of his deeds. But the bloodshed is not over. He sets sail again for Ithaca, arriving just in time to reunite with Penelope and their now-grown son Telemachus (an excellent Carlo Alban) with whom he cuts down the thugs who’ve been circling his throne and his wife.
Kate Hamill and Wayne T. Carr in A.R.T.’s world-premiere production of The Odyssey. Credit: Nile Scott Studios and Maggie Hall.
Ingenious stagecraft, evocative design (especially Sibyl Wickersheimer, Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, Paul James Presdergast, Kate Brehm) and painful dramatic irony come together at the climactic moment when Penelope unveils Odysseus’s would-be funeral shroud– the enormous tapestry she’s created, immortalizing her husband’s exploits. As the tapestry looms over us, splendid images of the warrior’s “noble” deeds are projected moving through the huge outlines of his figure. The tapestry is animated as much by Odysseus’s victories as it is by Penelope’s own life and imagination; she has poured herself into its creation, weaving and unweaving to kill time and to breath life into the myth of Odysseus taking shape. But we know the blood behind the myth.
Director Shana Cooper keeps all of these elements in balance: performance and staging, light and dark, high drama and low comedy, holding us in dramatic suspense though we know this story well. The production has the fleetness and heft of a fairy tale, where mortals in a fateful world learn– or don’t learn — the hard way. The living breathing tapestry of the human experience will be rewoven many times. Kate Hamill and the ART have given us a new thread to follow for these times, which lead to the same eternal questions. This “Odyssey” very clearly asks us once again to contemplate the price we pay for the choices we make as human beings in our world. What is the cost of power, violence, and revenge? Who has power and who pays that price? What is the cost to ourselves and our world–our home? And perhaps– do we have the imagination to weave a new story, one in which we are finally at home in ourselves?
See THE ODYSSEY at AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER through March 16!
