Penelope: A Discussion about a Play

Cast of Penelope (photo by Tim Matheson)

Two intrepid PLANK reviewers attended opening night of Penelope by Irish playwright Enda Walsh. Inspired by The Odyssey, the play tells of four men who are the last of 100 suitors come to woo Penelope as she waits long years for her husband to return. The men have set up a makeshift bachelor camp in the bottom of a drained swimming pool and now each tries to outdo the others as they believe that today is the day that Odysseus will come back to claim his wife (and kill them for their impunity).

After snagging a few snacks and filling out the survey questionnaire, our two reviewers headed over to Zawa's on the Drive to have the following discussion (recorded by touch typing on a smartphone): 

Danielle: What's my first hit on the show? In a pithy remark - moments of brilliance but mostly random. It felt superficial.

Allyson: Well, you nailed it for me. I thought it was like Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I have tried to read that book and found it impossible - I just could not bring myself to care about the main character (or anyone else). It made very little sense to me (so maybe I should go read The Odyssey).

Danielle: I didn't think that that this play didn't make sense. It felt more like a comment on itself. As if the actors weren't feeling or living their parts - it fell flat because they were telling a story from the outside. "Playing" their characters. Very stagy.

Allyson: And yet, it wasn't necessarily dictated by the script that they would always be performing -- though they certainly were as they tried to woo Penelope.

Danielle: This kind of script is challenging to make real. The actors largely lacked a personal connection to the text (with the exception being Kyle Jesperson as Burns). Also, Patrick Keating as Fitz had moments of beautiful vulnerability... But more often than not he was just a beautiful voice.

Allyson: I agree the script is challenging - no argument on that one! As the play continued, the four men onstage indulged in an ongoing game of one upmanship which frankly was less than interesting to me. And I don't think the revealing swimwear helped the actors keep it real. Being nearly naked onstage like that must have been so strange.

Danielle: I liked the idea of the characters being in the pool. I think I enjoyed the metaphor and I liked figuring out what's going on.

Allyson: As a game?

Danielle: An intellectual exercise or a puzzle which kept me in the play. Might have worked better as a druggie play - introduced a sense of heightened reality. I think it should be a contemporary epic but here it was trivialized... Which might be the point but a concept is not a 90-minute show...I don't need to watch the whole play to realize the guys are dumb and their struggle is trivial.

Allyson: Weirdly enough, I kept wanting it to mean something. I rarely enjoy spending time in a theatre with unpleasant people. There was no one to hang onto here. I didn't feel invested.

Danielle: For me, I felt that the four male suitors were part of a bigger story - a dirty footnote. I was rooting for Odysseus to return home. And poor Penelope - can you imagine choosing one of guys to spend your life with? Sometimes there are NO eligible suitors. I mean really.

Allyson: I certainly wouldn't jump into my swimsuit for any of them!

Danielle: The physical separation between the men and Penelope worked well as did the bleak dystopian, chaotic feel of the set. It perfectly illustrated the reality that these men had created for themselves. No love, no beauty except for Penelope. Objectification, gender, love... all that.

Allyson: Well if I was her, I would have locked myself in my house too.

Danielle: Overall, the gods may have forgotten this play. I like it more intellectually than onstage because I felt that it wasn't emotionally connected. It felt so trivial - but I'm really struggling with this because that might be the point. In which case it really did its job.

Allyson: And I still think it is Catch-22. Or even worse - Jar Head (a Gulf War film with Jake Gyllenhaal which shows the ongoing banality of day-to-day life in a war zone). Watching Penelope didn't make me feel uncomfortable, shocked, revolted or confronted. Just kinda grumpy. So maybe you're right - that was the point after all. Hmm... Need to ponder further.

NOTE: The discussion is one between two people who saw the show. Feel free to check it out and let us know what YOU think! 

 

By Danielle Benzon & Allyson McGrane
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