My Father, Odysseus (Unicorn Theatre)
The idea behind this new version of the story of Odysseus, of Trojan horse fame, and his son Telemachus, whom he has not seen for twenty years, is clearly to make it come alive for a modern audience, and more particularly a young modern audience. Themes of coming into manhood, dwelling on lost manhood, and the recognition of virtue between generations, abound.
The set is a playground, with more than a hint of circus about it. The suitors for the hand of Penelope, Odysseus's abandoned queen, cavort and amuse themselves at Odysseus's expense – and here the cavorting takes the form of swilling bottles of beer, having barbecues and whizzing around on a scooter in a Star Wars onesie. We are encouraged to view all this through the eyes of a young generation coming to these great legends for the first time. Yes, it's all very street-smart, consonants are discarded in favour of cartoonish mugging to the audience, and it has the look of your average day at the skate park.
But at what cost? Timberlake Wertenbaker's script is spare, descriptive and poetic in form. It's a clever concoction of myth and modern cadences, which exerts, on its own, a suitably hypnotic effect. The story has a timeless potency. But it's as if the audience can't be trusted to follow the threads of the narrative without glaring over-simplification and in-yer-face jokery. The restringing of Odysseus's bow, which only he can accomplish, and which leads to the slaughter of the parasitic suitors by father and son united, is treated as a bit of slapstick with 'blood' being squirted from a ketchup bottle by the goddess Athena (Charlotte De Bruyne). Still, Athena has spent a lot of time snacking on nuts up to this point, so there is clearly a deliberate antithesis being explored. It's less the goddess of wisdom and purity and more the ever-hungry teenager.
For all its sense of fun, this free-wheeling approach diminishes the subject matter. Ultimately we do not feel the power and depth of the journey undertaken by both father and son to reach this point of reconciliation, and that is a big chunk of the story to lose, or to underplay.
Accessible it may be, colourful certainly, but the production, directed by Purni Morell, retains little of the nobility of the original. That's a pity, for there is some fine work from Jeffery Kissoon as the world-weary Odysseus, and from Ginny Holder in the somewhat confusing triple role of the sultry beauty Penelope, the nymph Kalypso who keeps Odysseus 'captive', and the goddess Circe.
But, if this entices a few younger people to dip further into the great Greek myths and legends, all the foregoing grumpiness will be as nothing, and the production will have worked a kind of magic.
My Father, Odysseus – I Want to Go Home runs at the Unicorn Theatre until 10 April.
