Arts & Events

Eye from the Aisle: PENELOPE-- Graves is a Berkeley treasure!

By John A. McMullen II
Monday November 01, 2010 - 03:35:00 PM
Jan Zvaifler in the title role.
Jay Yamada
Jan Zvaifler in the title role.

There is a wave of Iliad and Odyssey plays washing over the East Bay: the “Salt Plays” at Shotgun, and now PENELOPE’S ODYSSEY by Gary Graves at Central Works playing at the historic Berkeley City Club. 

PENELOPE plays out the myth to its logical conclusion given the circumstances and the personalities of the characters, in modern idiom and parlance, with just enough intersplicing of imagery and passages from Homer to appeal to modern sensibilities. Graves knows how to spin a modern tale and is a wordsmith of the first water. 

In the imposing room with the great hearth and 20-foot beamed ceiling, with amphorae in the niches and Paul Germain’s artwork of a strung bow—Odysseus’ proverbial weapon—as centerpiece above the mantel, the legend of the post-war wanderer is brought to life. 


(NOTE: these marvelous modern dramatizations of classic plays may not be for everyone. I went to these plays and raved, but my friends replied with, “What was that about?!” It helps to know something about the legend to understand the allusions, implications, and complications of the situation. Otherwise it’s like watching Woody Allen’s “Play it Again, Sam,” without ever having seen “Casablanca.” These days it’s pretty simple with Google to find a quick summary on the web. Used to be that the works every literate person knew and read were The Bible, The Iliad and Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (replaced by Bullfinch’s Mythology), and Shakespeare; thus, these are the sources for the allusions of most literature and drama in the Western World. So, if you studied something in undergrad that saves lives or builds dams or contributes something other than making you really good at “Jeopardy,” take a few minutes to inform yourself and go to Wikipedia for a ten minute background read before you go; the more you know the more you’ll enjoy.) 

That disclaimer done, PENELOPE has its problems, but I don’t think it’s with the script. There is a difference of acting styles that works to the detriment of the play. Matt Lai is a consummate comic actor, and those often make the best dramatic ones. His style in the part of Antinus, Penelope’s main suitor, is cinematically realistic with nuance and subtext galore, and when he talks, it is as if he is not acting, and thus relaxes us into believing. His is the first scene, and he sets the tone and tenor for the play—alas, under the direction of John Patrick Moore, the other actors do not provide the same measure of realism. 

The theatre is about 45 seats, and being 6 to 12 feet away from the actors is grandly intimate, but the trade-off is that there is a burden of realism on the actor perhaps not as acute as on a larger stage. You can smell “acting” when you’re that up-close. 

Jan Zvaifler plays Penelope, Odysseus’ patient wife who has kept up the hope of his return for 20 years, while being inundated by suitors who can party like the Greeks and are eating her out of house and home. With sunglasses and dressed in Tammy Berlin’s lovely sea-colored frocks, she is the very picture of the other famous Greek widow Jackie O. She has the same demure and sophisticated manner, and her shining blue eyes radiate to the audience when she turns her head up to speak in her warm alto. She is quietly emotional, and in the later tempestuous moments, we see tears stream down her face. Her final transformation of character is impressive. However, her delivery is not as easy and modern as hoped for. After the play, when she gave the “please donate” curtain speech, she revealed a glittering personality full of easy and charming expression which we wish could have been infused into the character. 

Graves’ plays freely with the myth, as all writers have license to do and thereby expand and create great things. He casts Telemachus—the scion of Odysseus—as a transgendered daughter turned son by the goddess’ intervention, and this is believably and movingly exposited. I can’t recall a precedent for this turn of the myth, except for a twist on the myth of Tiresias who was a man-turned-woman-turned-man by supernatural action and who gave Odysseus good advice when they met in Hades. Odysseus’ acceptance of Telemachus’ “her-turned-him” nature bonds them. As soon as the gender discrepancy is explained, Leontyne Mbele-Mbong looks believable in the part of Telemachus as a teenager in conflict, though her expression is the usual spectrum of adolescent reactions of sulking, frustration, and outrage. 

Graves’ writing is filled with the same expansive imagery as Homer—not just “wine-dark sea” and “rosy-fingered dawn” but those are in there, too. Regrettably, too often the actors did not reveal the pictures that his words paint. In the second half of the first act, the writing of the dialogue between Penelope and Telemachus seems to turn to a more classic style, and they fell into the trap of declamation, volleying words as if in a speed-run, so that we couldn’t tell what the emotional message was and sometimes lost track altogether. It was one of those extended, uncomfortable moments when folks turned to read their programs or looked at the architecture. 

In the 1st century B.C.E., Quintus Roscius Gallus—the first Roman actor to be knighted in a society that held the profession in contempt—theorized that there was a magic to acting that allowed the practiced actor to 1) envision the image in his mind’s eye and, 2) through his words, 3) transfer that image into the audience’s mind. In their rush, it seemed that the actors in this production may have skipped that first step. 

The second act swells with action and irony upon the arrival or the long-awaited master of the house, and Graves uses Homer’s ironies well. Terry Lamb plays Nobody. Perhaps you’ll recall that when Odysseus is trapped in the cave by the Cyclops Polyphemus, he tells him his name is “Nobody.” After he blinds the Cyclops with a spear, Polyphemus goes raging to his brother Cyclops, urging them to vengeance. When they ask, “Who did this to you?” Polyphemus replies, 

“Nobody!” “But who is to blame?” “Nobody!” Sort of like a Greek version of “Who’s on first?” 

Lamb’s performance as the grizzled, foul-smelling tramp/troubadour—Odysseus in disguise, of course—is closer to realistic, but still carries a touch of “performing,” and he ends most lines with a self-satisfied, self-conscious chuckle. He boldly delivers the story of the Trojan Horse, and we follow every moment and see every word-picture. His character as written is true to the hardening of men at war, and he is unrecognizable to his wife who, we would imagine, looks deep into the face of every stranger to see if it’s her husband returned. When he and Telemachus plot to exterminate the interlopers, he asks, “Ever kill a man? The killing’s easy. Living with yourself afterward is a bit tricky.” Lamb effectively underplays this gut-wrenching line as an off-the-cuff remark. Graves aptly has “Odysseus the cunning” end his days as a “vet” who obsessively spouts war stories between pulls on the bottle, wearing just his underwear and wife’s housecoat, with the story trailing off into drunken oblivion. 

More moving ironies: 

· Antinus falling in love with Penelope and making her laugh by singing a Tom Jones’ impersonation—and her laughing as if it is the first time she has laughed in 20 years—all just before the arrival of her long-lost husband, as well as the erotic symbolism of Antinus’ gift. 

· Odysseus singing “This Old Man (Knick Knack Paddy Wack)” which gives us a recognizable and wry joy with a nod to Odysseus’ fabled and absent dog Argos. 

· Odysseus waxing philosophical about the goat, which is reputed to sing a song of “Don’t let it be me!” before it is sacrificed for our sins as the scapegoat, and which conjures up the literal translation of “tragedy”: tragos = "goat" and aeidein = "to sing, as an ode." 

The final irony is that, while Homer writes a happy ending, the tragedy of abandonment and Ibsen-like despair here is a much more realistic and satisfying resolution. 

 

Penelope's Odyssey, a new play based on Homer’s Odyssey 

at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley  

Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 5pm thru November 21 

Tickets (800) 838-3006 Info www.centralworks.org  

Written by Gary Graves, directed by John Patrick Moore, lighting by Gary Graves, costumes by Tammy Berlin, stage management by Gregory Scharpen, with art by Peter Germain. 

WITH: Matt Lai, Terry Lamb, Leontyne Mbele-Mbong, and Jan Zvaifler. 

John A. McMullen II has been reviewing for the Berkeley Daily Planet since April, and is a member of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle and the American Theatre Critics Association. Contact EyefromtheAisle@gmail.com Thanks to EJ Dunne for editing.