The Penelopiad
Reviewed by Amanda L. Andrei
City Garage Theatre
Through Dec. 18
RECOMMENDED
What is the duty of a queen to protect her realm? What are the consequences of sacrificing others to protect yourself?
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, adapted from her 2005 novella of the same name, provides the perspective of Penelope, queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus, as she reflects in Hades over the execution of 12 beloved maidservants upon her husband’s return—the dire price for keeping invasive suitors at bay.
More of a spinoff than an adaptation, the play is ambitious and messy (much like The Odyssey itself), feeling more like collaged narration until the second act, when Odysseus (played by the staunch Emily Asher Kellis) arrives home. While this structure is intentional (the novella itself takes inspiration from Greek dramatic structure, with Penelope monologuing while the Chorus interrupts her through different musical genres), the heroine’s language sounds more literary, describing past actions and interiority instead of present conflict, leading to a lulled pace that picks up either when the Chorus transforms into beautiful stage images, or Odysseus’s arrival puts an end to the kingdom’s chaos.
And the Chorus is beautiful. To see a cast of 13 women onstage is a delight, and to see 11 of them (Emily Asher Kellis, Courtney Brechemin, Marie Paquim, Angela Beyer, Kat Johnston, Marissa Ruiz, Léa De Carmo, Loosema Hakverdian, Mary Egan, Devin Davis-Lorton, Lindsey Plake) metamorphose into a raft of ducks, a ship, a group of weavers, a pair of sacrificial animals, and more — feels like a modern yet anciently rooted Chorus at its best and is a credit to Frédérique Michel’s choreography and direction. Occasionally they burst into song (arranged by Devin Davis-Lorton, Marissa Ruiz, and Kat Johnston), which feels tonally jarring with a rap number, but otherwise alternating between mournful, mocking, and melancholy lullabies and ballads.
Watching and moving among this sea of women are the Penelope narrators: Peggy Flood as a deadpan and sardonic spirit, pressed into her coolly bitter state after twenty years of abandonment and waiting, observing Younger Penelope (Lindsey Plake) as the memory of a naïve and hopeful teen bride. Younger Penelope faces frustration with her lascivious cousin, Helen (Marie Paquim), that woman with the face that launched a thousand ships, and Eurycleia (Geraldine Fuentes), the loyal yet patronizing nursemaid of Odysseus.
The collateral damage adds up. In Homer’s version, Odysseus orders the execution of 12 maidservants for their debauchery with the suitors. In Atwood’s version, the rationale for their behavior comes from Penelope’s orders for the maids to keep the suitors at bay with “enticing arts” and any means necessary to allow her to weave and unweave a funerary shroud. Upon completion of the shroud on a spiderweb-shaped loom (cleverly designed by Charles Duncombe, giving homage to the myth of Arachne and Athena), she signals her availability as a marriageable commodity, hence her cunning plot to unravel it each night. Unfortunately, her mandate to the maids leads to a disturbingly stylized group assault scene, after which Penelope asks her maids to “bear it a little longer.”
At this point, I lost respect and sympathy for the Ithacan queen and deeply questioned the politics of this play. Perhaps I am biased by my exposure to The Handmaid’s Tale as both novel and television series, feeling too saturated by Atwood’s particular recurring motifs of violence to receive this image on stage instead of a page or screen. While I believe that theater at its best should trigger catharsis, the live performance of such an act and subsequent (lack of) aftermath or victims’ voices leads me to ask: Is this subversive or gratuitous? Is this depiction a message about the cruelty of women to each other within decades of senseless patriarchal war and waiting? If so, does it oust empathy and solidarity for shocking sexual violence, or does it have the effect of spurring the audience to question injustice and double standards?
Perhaps similar questions haunt Atwood’s Penelope as well. Whether queen or ghost, she shows us that (in)action has consequences, and mere contemplation on atrocities can only take us so far.
City Garage at Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Building T1, Santa Monica; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 4 pm; thru Dec. 18. https://citygarage.org
