As the heartfelt finale resounds from vast throngs of colourful Ithacans on the Olivier stage welcoming home Odysseus after twenty long years of trials and tribulations, delighted applause, tears of emotion and standing ovations break out. OK, the script and music of The Odyssey: the Underworld is neither piercingly sharp nor outstanding and there’s no mention at all of the Coronation Street knicker factory, yet this is a highly enjoyable entertainment, dotted with humour, dark drama, fine performances, big solos, rousing choruses, exhortations on human qualities that currently preoccupy us, plus a massively extravagant sumptuosity of glittering colour, glitz and glamour: the costumes of the Olympic gods and some of the set designs and props are of great artistic beauty. One hour forty minutes without interval flies by.
This final musical tale celebrates the fifth anniversary of The National Theatre’s ambitious, nationwide Public Acts project, a colossal enterprise that’s bulldozed aside Covid obstacles and proudly achieved its admirable ambition of creating “extraordinary acts of theatre and community”. Firm in the belief that creativity and artistic expression exist in anyone and everyone (just about), the project has resulted in exhilarating new productions that pair the talents, dreams, enthusiasms and diversity of individuals in our broader communities with extensive, top-class input from theatrical professionals.
Workshops started first with communities, organisations and theatrical partners in the London area, leading to vibrant, highly acclaimed productions of Pericles and As You Like It. Broadening next to far-flung partners in less flourishing areas – Stoke, Sunderland, Trowbridge and Doncaster – there came the fabulously successful The Doncastrian Chalk Circle in 2022 (based on Brecht’s Caucasian one) while this spring, following large-scale, all-inclusive research, workshops and rehearsals in all the locations, exhilarating National Theatre co-productions of re-imagined episodes of Homer’s epic Odyssey were staged: Lotus Eaters in Stoke-on-Trent, The Cyclops in Doncaster, The Four Winds in Trowbridge and The Island of the Sun in Sunderland. It’s the Olivier that stages this fifth and final, stand-alone episode, again bringing together theatrical professionals and amateur participants from those far-flung locations to a grand total of one hundred and sixty.
Odysseus, portrayed by powerful singer/performer Sharon Duncan-Brewster, is a hero who, like all the characters onstage, gods included, is full of flaws as well as nobler qualities. In spite of self-doubt, self-reproach and deep despair, resilience eventually comes to the fore, along with courage, strength, determination and persistence in the face of adversity, a lesson for us all – as is made clear. This particular working warrior is also a single mum, but unlike her male counterpart she has no faithful, long-suffering Penelope waiting patiently for 20 years, cunningly weaving and un-weaving ad infinitum whilst raising baby Telemachus. Penny gets no mention whatsoever, for this lucky Odysseus has a goddess nanny to care for her lad. Elegant in clinging, shimmering silver, fine singer/performer, Emma Prendergast is Athena, a goddess instrumental in eventually reuniting Telemachus with his mother, their love-bond being the central focus of the musical. Before our very eyes little Telemachus turns into teenager Telemachus before finally settling into being a young, determined Ithacan man played by Tarinn Callender.
Along the way, we learn of Odysseus’ earlier trials and tribulations, including her encounters with the Lotus Eaters and the monstrous Cyclops, the loss of her entire crew and fleet, and the 10 years she spent fighting the Trojan war before thinking to win it with a wooden horse.
So the show can come nicely full circle, it starts where it ends – in Ithaca, but to find Odysseus we travel next to the Calypso Hotel where the unfortunate warrior is trapped on an island for seven years by mists and impossible seas, and living under a spell of forgetfulness cast by selfish Calypso. Played bouncy and bright by Amy Booth-Steel, Calypso sports panto-Dame frock and fine 10-gallon hat and rollers atop her wig. Now cue bright deckchairs and gaudily clad, stereotypical package holiday tourists, armed with beach toys, backpacks and topical jokes, who find themselves likewise trapped on the misty island.
In charge of the stormy weather, of course, is Poseidon. Victoria Hamilton Barritt’s pleasing stage presence, engaging acting and singing skills create a formidable sea-god, a tridentless, elegant vision in scintillating creations of pale blue and transparent silveriness. And there’s an even more deliciously overindulgent feast for the eyes in a spectacular event of dazzling elegance and resplendence – with a spot of celebratory audience participation to boot – when great masses of gods come together for Zeus’s surprise birthday party, all in stunning outfits.
In contrast, in the Underworld that Odysseus must visit once released from Calypso’s spell, the garb of the Shades of the Dead is pale and subdued while their Rocky-Horror-style Hades master presides in black and white: long, black hair rims his bald pate, trailing to the floor over a frock of fluffy, white drapes beneath which feature black shoulder-length gloves, patent platform boots and black leg attire. In song and speech Zubin Varla becomes a quietly wily persuader and manipulator as he tempts and lures Odysseus with drinks, plump, cosy armchairs and promises of eternal rest if only she forgets the stressful world of the living and comes to reside forever with the spirits of her dead crewmates, her old pal Achilles and her beloved mother. Odysseus, though, determined to reunite with Telemachus, will have none of it. Even the alluring artistic splendour of long, long, beautifully lit strings of impossible numbers of skewered papers that dangle and dance from on high cannot detain her. Brought by golden god Hermes, the postman who always delivers, these unending papers, we learn, are letters from the living to the dead, great and small, that prove no-one is ever forgotten: all live on in the memories of those they loved – a message with poignant significance in regard to our own recent pandemic.
Exciting instrument combinations – banjo, dulcimer, mandocello, violin, wind, percussion, guitars and keys – adorn Jim Fortune’s score, the excellent musicians sitting high in the gallery above the stage which, like the aisles, is also used at times by the cast. Into the colossal mix come the London Bodhran Band, Haringey Vox Choir and South Wales Gay Men’s Chorus in striking white and blue with jaunty braces, though it’s disappointing that each group doesn’t have a real chance to strut their stuff more fully on their own, though the fine Impact Dance Group get their moment. The choreographed movement flows well even when the stage is chocka with performers, special charm added with the use of the revolving stage and the artistic incorporation of props like the wonderfully elegant, cutlass-shaped oars.
The long-haul work and organisation in producing such a glorious entertainment is pretty superhuman in itself, especially when the abilities of this huge, far-flung cast are so vastly diverse, while writer Chris Bush’s big challenge was to turn away from a more traditional, dispassionate way of telling mythological tales to re-arrange, refocus, update and tailor the episodes to reflect our more modern sensibilities and preoccupations. Messages of love, loss, hope, of pulling together and of never giving up are brought home without subtlety, culminating in the powerfully touching reunion of Telemachus and his mother in the rousing musical finale. Bravo!
Eileen Caiger Gray
