Enda Walsh’s Penelope is a captivating hybrid of Greek myth and Irish characterisation. It appears to be baking under an Ithacan sun, but its characters have voices soaked in the grey of more northerly isles and names that underscore that origin. It’s not the first example of an Hibernian cowl worn over the shape of antiquity: James Joyce’s Ulysses is the most prominent one but Marina Carr, Macnas and Barrabas have also toyed with the trope in recent years.
Penelope’s collision of anachronistic elements is a back story to The Odyssey: four suitors (Niall Buggy, Denis Conway, Tadhg Murphy and Karl Shiels) vie for the hand of Odysseus’ wife (Olga Wehrly) before his prophesied return, and their destruction at his hand. They reside at the bottom of a bloodstained swimming pool, listlessly discussing the taste of heat, and heat has them stripped to togs and gowns. The set, as one has come to expect from Druid, is wrought whole from designer Sabine Dargent’s mind, an edifice of astonishing detail, dense and oppressive.
We learn that the four are all that remain of many other suitors, and they are plainly pathetic in their dominance. True to form Walsh has created pitiable characters who are given to the most lyrical explication. There are many outstandingly funny sequences of wordplay and slapstick, of dress-up and talk-down, but somehow Penelope fails to generate the emotional resonance of earlier shows: The Walsworth Farce has the audience giggling from mouths frozen in a rictus of horror; (and as I’ve said before here) The New Electric Ballroom has one of the most breathtaking moments of emotional clarity I have ever seen on the stage. This is not to denigrate the performances of a heavy-lifting cast: Walsworth stalwarts Murphy and Conway in particular deliver strong performances. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the part of Quinn may have been written with director Mikel Murfi in mind, but Sheils conjures more menace and simmering threat into the role than having your tackle so prominently on display would normally allow. Buggy’s unerring ability to fill a stage with a crease of the eye is well represented here.
Penelope herself (Wehrly) was an exercise in pointlessness, a cypher whose job it was to float onstage during the rare times she was called for. The play would have benefited from having Penelope implied metaphorically, as Odysseus is, rather than being a visual valve for the close knit tension mounted by the four leads. There is a mysteriously large CCTV camera mounted prominently on the stage, its purpose becoming clear during the course of the show: it would have served to symbolise an unobtainable presence much more than the stylised, albeit well-executed, movements of the actor. Perhaps what’s desired but unattainable to the characters should be visually desired and equally as unattainable to an audience.
Walsh has much to say on love, power and mercy, but it doesn’t crystallise with the same density here as in previous work. In saying that, this is still an almighty piece of spectacle, verse and stagecraft, and Walsh remains one of the most menacingly entertaining voices in Irish theatre. Mikel Murfi’s notions of space, timing, movement and stillness mesh completely with Walsh’s voice, and suggest an exciting partnership ahead.
Penelope packs enough of a bulge in its speedos to make it worth checking out the talent at the pool.
Penelope was performed during the Galway Arts Festival 2010.
Tour dates:
Edinburgh Festival Fringe - Traverse Theatre
August 5 – 29, 2010
Helsinki, Finland - The Stage Theatre Festival
September 1- 2, 2010
Galway - Town Hall Theatre
September 9 – 12, 2010
Dun Laoghaire, Dublin - Pavilion Theatre
September 14 – 18, 2010
New York, USA - St Ann’s Warehouse
October 23 – November 11, 2010
London - Hampstead Theatre
Feb 10 – Mar 5, 2011
