Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope, left, comes face to face with Charlie Russell’s returning Odysseus. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
THE Penelopiad is the heavyweight centrepiece of York Theatre Royal’s autumn programme, Wednesday’s press night being marked by the presence of Arts Council England luminaries.
Creative director Juliet Forster’s plans to mount Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood’s re-spinning of Homer’s yarn in 2020 were scuppered by Covid’s clenches. Roll on to 2026, when Forster’s all-female production finds its counter-Homer home at last with the self-explanatory full title of The Penelopiad, The Odyssey: Her Story in the city where Actors Of Dionysus and Wright & Grainger’s Greek tragedies have made their mark.
Not only is The Penelopiad “her story” but “their story” too. After The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood delivers a multitude of Maids here, Penelope’s hand-picked slaves’ daughters: wronged, vengeful and constantly meddling in Penelope’s wishes to re-tell her tale, post-death, in the Underworld.
The glacial Penelope may want to miss out chunks, just like Christopher Nolan’s film made no mention of Odysseus’s philandering ways in his 20-year avoidance of coming home from the Trojan Wars, but the Maids have other ideas, and they will do anything to re-route The Penelopiad’s journey, from child puppetry to a rather short tap dance, girl group singing to acrobatic aerial skills, macho masks to more macho masks.
Pena Iiyambo’s Helen goes full Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch mode with the masked Maids in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
Riot Women actress Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope is still at the core, still an honourable figure of loyalty and restraint, but the restless riot women of this piece, the Maids, keep breaking her poised rhythm, shattering her sang froid and melancholic air.
Nevertheless, especially in Bullmore’s honeyed tones and elegant white jumpsuit and coat, Penelope’s dry-witted putdowns are the embodiment of Atwood’s own irreverent humour, becoming a particular joy of her ice-queen performance.
Her spat with Pena Iiyambo’s preening Helen, trollop of Troy, could launch a thousand quips, but one withering epithet suffices, although Iiyambo’s pulchritudinous Helen still has her Marilyn Monroe moment in screen goddess frills in the face of Penelope’s enmity.
Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope, surrounded by her Maids with their macho masks to portray aristo Suitors. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
Atwood had been haunted by the fate of the Maids, under Odysseus’s orders, prompting the vengeance of The Penelopiad, where the horror counters the jesting humour that mocks Charlie Russell’s Odysseus for having short legs, much as Eric Morecambe would tease Ernie Wise.
Atwood’s Penelope comes across as “methinks she doth protest too much” with her First World problems, complaints of being busy without being so and eating only asphodel flowers in Hades, while using the Maids’ wiles to stave off the unwanted attentions of the Suitors, whereas the Maids are up against it, putting themselves at risk on her behalf.
They do, however, find common ground when working together to weave and unpick Penelope’s tapestry to ward off those pesky Suitors. Ropes emerge as the motif that weave their way through Forster’s production and Sara Perks’s design, whether in the tapestry, the aerial circus skills of assorted Maids, pulling Penelope’s bed upwards or downwards, becoming a hissing snake or, spoiler alert, a hangman’s mode of execution.
Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope, right, in discussion on her bed with her Maids. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
Bullmore’s Penelope has a stillness and depth of character that contrasts with the Catherine Wheel fizz of the octet of multi-rolling Maids, especially when they play the leery, lecherous aristo Suitors, very much 2D stereotypes. Having women taking these roles is a further way of Atwood taking revenge on Homer’s misogyny, all the more forceful for the choreography of Frantic Assembly’s Michelle Edwards.
These graphic caricatures climax in the form of Russell’s Odysseus, mocked by Atwood not only for short legs, but in no longer being a mighty physical specimen, full stop, but a mendacious trickster with dubious moral values.
The Maids (Iiyambo, Russell, Nell Baker, Danielle Bird, Olivia Burton-Laws, Faye Campbell, Kat Johns-Burke and Syakira Moeladi) achieve both individuality and collective vigour the more they come to the fore, while Bird stands out as Eurycleia, the Odysseus loyalist who besmirches the Maids and cuts Penelope out of nursing her son Telemachus.
The Maids displaying rope and aerial skills in The Penelopiad. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
What are the plus points beyond Bullmore’s elegance with Atwood’s eloquence and the Maids’ zest? Perks’s design, described as chic by Bullmore in her interview, is startling, bright, white, modernist and minimalist, but timeless too, countered by Alexandra Stafford’s palette of colours in her lighting, most notably red to evoke the night of the Trojan Horse.
Edwards’s movement direction maximises the physicality of women playing men; Kate Marlais’s compositions, varying from rousing declamations to quieter underscoring and laments, are at their best when haunting.
The negatives? Whereas the humour in Bullmore’s Penelope is assured, polished and consistent in tone, elsewhere it is more erratic, uneven, sometimes pushing too hard. Given the harrowing denouement to come, it is a difficult balancing act for Forster to achieve, especially when comedy has a tendency to undermine tragedy and outrage, rape and execution. Ultimately, this account of The Penelopiad plays more to the head, the senses of sight and sound, than to the heart.
The Penelopiad, York Theatre Royal, unravelling the strands until October 31. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope and Charlie Russell’s Odysseus in The Penelopiad. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography