The Odyssey

By Robert Iles - 2nd Apr 2012

How can I review a show that will be utterly different at every performance? Answer – I can’t. But I can say that as an evening of storytelling, this would be difficult to beat. Of course they are on to a winner with the venue. Where better to be told fantastical tales than in arguably the country’s best bookshop.

Homer’s Odyssey is told in 24 books and this convention was echoed in the structure of the evening. Each book was told in a different style or included a task to be fulfilled and each book had a different actor filling the role of the eponymous hero. The task was dictated by a member of the audience blindly picking it out of a small red pot. The story was then told with a mixture of narration, dialogue, action and songs. So we had one book as a radio play – lights out, just listen to the dialogue, one book where the audience were the set – on this occasion, Calypso’s cave, and my favourite, one book where all the dialogue was spoken in ancient Greek – hats off to a company that can improvise in ancient Greek and still tell the story effectively.

I really liked this – it’s like nothing I have seen before and I spent much of the evening being surprised and delighted at the ingenuity of it all. Very tempted to see it again.