"The Odyssey" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

This is the first of a whole bunch of posts about plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this year. Over the course of three visits, we plan to see all eleven shows on offer. This first trip is the biggest, with six plays, so I guess it's only appropriate to start with the longest, Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of Homer's epic poem The Odyssey.

Of personal interest, this was the first time anyone in our party had sat in the balcony of the Allen Elizabethan Theatre. We were in the front row, just to one side, and the sight lines were excellent. I think I might seek out seats like that in the future. It gives a really good view of all the levels of the stage superstructure, though our view of the voms were somewhat occluded. But overall we thought it was an excellent place to see the play--especially for those shorter members of the group, as there was no one blocking any part of their view.

The Play

No, I'm not going to summarize either the whole epic or the whole play here. Suffice it to say Odysseus is delayed about 20 years coming home from the Trojan War. His wife, Penelope and son Telemachus are besieged by suitors who want to marry Penelope, believing Odysseus to be dead. For years, they essentially occupy their home in Ithaca, consuming and carousing.

The story is essentially the retelling of all the things that delayed his return. Gods and monsters are involved. Really, read it if you haven't. The play is based on the Robert Fitzgerald translation, but there is also a newer, more poetic translation by Robert Fagles. They are both good.

The Adaptation

It's always challenging adapting works that are a) long and b) well known. Mary Zimmerman doesn't shy away from those projects, however. She has a knack for taking mythical tales and transforming them into something that works well onstage.

This effort was perhaps the most straightforward of her adaptations I've seen. Much of it, particularly toward the end of the first act and all of the second, where it's pretty much Odysseus telling his story, works really well. I thought some of the earlier bits felt repetitive, but in retrospect I think that was more a muddling of the frame story with the tall tales within. It's much clearer later.

The Production

First point, Zimmerman in her role as director made some good choices with the designers. By keeping the staging relatively simple, it adds to the storytelling aspect, relying on the imagination rather than fancy stagecraft. So Odysseus builds a raft from just a few poles laid out on the stage to suggest the shape. Those poles are later used as oars by his crew, and for various purposes by the suitors.

Second, the outdoor setting is quite marvelous for a show of this scope. The large, open stage and the moonlight from above add to the "tales around the campfire" aspect of the production. The actors are amplified. That's just a reality in the outdoor theater these days. I find it unfortunate, but I understand that a lot of the patrons have difficulty hearing otherwise.

Third, I quite liked the opening scene, where Christiana Clark starts out trying to read the book of the Odyssey and finds it daunting until the Muse awakens and brings the story to life for her. I thought it was very well done (Clark is terrific throughout, mostly as Athena), and an effective transition into the ficton of the play.

Discussing the play at intermission, a couple of us felt like it had been a little slow, and a little lacking in anything other than just kind of outlining the story. The latter is kind of intrinsic to adapting an entire epic to a single play (albeit almost 3.5 hours of play!) . The pacing could probably be tightened up a bit, too, but ultimately...it's an epic. It will take a while. But I kind of felt that telling the story is good, but I felt like I ought to have some notion of where this was going by then, other than just being halfway through the story.

There is more of a payoff in the second act. The reunion scenes are very well handled: Odysseus and Penelope have a very touching scene, very effectively made intimate by lighting. And Penelope's red velvet dress is simple and beautifully elegant. Ultimately the payoff doesn't really seem to be any great new insight into The Odyssey, but it does an effective job of getting the key points of Homer's endings across. After twenty years, Odysseus and Penelope have to get past some trust issues, and they do in in classical form.

The Bottom Line

This is a production on a scale that only a theater like Ashland can pull off: big cast, long run time, lots of costumes, etc. But they have the budget, the staff, and the facilities to do it and do it well. Needless to say the acting is excellent, and many of the costumes are excellent (though Zeus's is somewhat wasted, as he is rarely on stage where we can really appreciate it).

Ultimately there is a reason why stories like the Odyssey stand up to centuries of retelling and translation: they are fundamentally strong tales. And OSF does a good job of putting this one on stage. Though the first act felt a bit long, the second seemed to fly by and really engaged us.