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.
