Toronto Star - January 13, 2012

"Review: The Penelopiad is stunning theatre"
Richard Ouzounian

★ ★ ★ ★ (out of 4)

Satanically witty and yet profoundly moving, Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad is a pitiless indictment of the horrors that men bring onto women, but even more frighteningly, the horrors that women do unto each other.

In the superb Nightwood Theatre production that opened at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre on Thursday night, the work's potential to charm and alarm us in equal measure is displayed to its full power.

Ostensibly the story of the wily Trojan War hero, Odysseus, told from the point of view of his wife, Penelope, it becomes far more than that, in a sweeping look at all wars ever fought, the men who went away to fight them and the women who were left behind to suffer in countless ways.

The play's first act roughly parallels The Iliad, telling us the events that led up to the Trojan War and the many years the struggle itself took. But we see most of it filtered through the prism of the noble Penelope, waiting at home.

A lot of it is great fun and the way that director Kelly Thornton leads her all-female cast to play men more convincingly than most men could makes for superb theatricality. In particular, one must praise Kelli Fox, whose Odysseus is as crafty, complex, charismatic and conniving as the man could ever hope to be.

But, in the second act, we go on the journey of The Odyssey and things become darker. Odysseus's absence stretches out to decades, unwanted suitors lay siege to Penelope's house, and their son, Telemachus, is now a young man looking to define himself in a world of women.

The final return of Odysseus and the price that everyone has to pay to restore the world to what it used to be is as terrifying as it is fulfilling.

But this, Atwood seems to be saying, is what life is: no happy endings, no easy solutions, just an afterlife where – if you are lucky – you can drink from the waters of forgetfulness.

It's heady stuff, spinning on a razor's edge constantly between hilarity and horror, but Thornton and her team are up for it.

The staging in particular has the stamp of genius on it, alternating from mock classical Greek theatre, to modern dance, with some brief but welcome excursions into the world of vaudeville.

The stage is virtually bare, but the lighting of Kimberly Purtell is all we need to bring us a world of golden myth, scarlet nightmares and the cold white light of an unforgiving dawn.

And the praise for this cast can't be overdone. Megan Follows captures countless shades of regret and longing as Penelope; Pamela Sinha dazzles in just the right shallow way as Helen; Pat Hamilton is as tough as a granite column (but far funnier) playing the ancient Eurycleia, and Bahia Watson is simply magical as Telemachus.

The Penelopiad is a major work, given a major production and it deserves the attention of anyone who wants to see just how great a piece of Canadian theatre can be, in the right hands.

Source: Toronto Star

The Globe & Mail - January 13, 2012

"Fine female cast makes for a magical Penelopiad"
J. Kelly Nestruck

★ ★ ★ ½ (out of 4)

Penelope may have spent the last few millennia pacing the gloomy halls of Hades, but she still knows how to make an entrance.

In Kelly Thornton's mostly magical production of The Penelopiad, she arrives on stage in the formidable form of Megan Follows in a flood of light and sound and floating upon a carpet of white smoke.

After ironically striking a few of her famous feminine poses from classical sculpture and painting, Penelope delivers the deliciously dry first line Margaret Atwood has given her: "Now that I'm dead, I know everything."

You might say, The Penelopiad, which Atwood transformed from a novella to a play in 2007, is about the destination, not the journey.

Penelope, the long-suffering wife of Odysseus, retells a certain Homeric epic from the perspective of the home front - reliving the 20 years she spent waiting for her hero to return from the Trojan war to Ithaca, a place name she pronounces as if it were a detestable sexually transmitted disease.

While her husband is off on his odyssey, Penelope has to battle boredom, raise her rebellious son Telemachus, and fend off a pack of so-called suitors wanting to put their hands on Odysseus's riches.

What continues to horrify Penelope in the afterlife is what happened on Odysseus's eventual return, however: The suitors were slain, but so were 12 maids who consorted with them.

In Atwood's feminist version of the great myth, the maids were simply playing along as part of a plot by the pragmatic Penelope.

These 12 Ithacan maids are a constant presence in the play - haunting Penelope, but also helping her relate this cautionary tale full of rue for the horrors inflicted upon women in war, a dramatic theme that can be traced back at least to Euripides.

The conceit allows for a baker's dozen of fine female performances. In the supporting cast, Kelli Fox is at the top of the list, simply extraordinary as Odysseus, barrel-chested and bursting with confidence.

Standout Pamela Sinha flits about flirtatiously as Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships - or, in her jealous cousin Penelope's less poetic construction, "that septic bitch." Maev Beaty and Sarah Dodd are hilarious as a pair of endearingly irritating in-laws. As Telemachus, the up-and-coming Bahia Watson gets the posturing of male adolescence perfectly, showing the boy and the man at war within.

With frequently clever choreography from Monica Dottor, Thornton's production is thoughtful and entertaining and appears to be an absolute triumph for much of the first act. The choral sequences are inventively staged with a series of nooses that transform into skipping ropes or are interlaced as if yarn in a giant weaving machine. (The fate of the maids literally looming large?)

When the women move from speaking to singing, however, the result is a little less harmonious - and the accompanying recorded compositions by Suba Sankaran sound synthetic or even cheesy. Here's a production that would have benefited from jumping on the bandwagon of, well, having the cast double as a band.

On opening night, Thornton's production also suffered from uneven pacing. In its premiere at the National Arts Centre and the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2007, The Penelopiad clocked in at about 100 minutes with no intermission; here it runs about 2-1/2 hours with one. It hasn't quite found its flow yet; it feels chunky and, in the second a half, sluggish.

Even Follows's performance - superb in slices - lacks a sense of a complete arc, diminishing the play's full dramatic and emotional impact. Nevertheless, with a cast with this concentration of talent, this premiere of Atwood's play in her hometown still feels like a theatrical event not to be missed.

Source: The Globe & Mail

Toronto Sun - January 13, 2012

"The Penelopiad makes history"
John Coulbourn (QMI Agency)

★ ★ ★ ★ (out of 5)

There are, wags assure us, three sides to every story: his side, her side and the truth.

In the case of Homer's Odyssey, however, it seems Greece's blind bard concentrated almost exclusively in the telling of the story of the marriage of Odysseus, hero of the Trojan War, and his long-suffering wife, Penelope, on the male's side of the story – as witnessed by the story's title.

But now, a few thousand years after Homer either spun his yarn or wrote it down, Canada's own beloved bard, Margaret Atwood, takes up the torch to tackle the distaff side of the timeless tale, finally giving voice to the woman forced to keep the home fires burning when her husband carelessly angers the god Poseidon and is forced to spend a decade and more getting home from the war. Or at least, that's what he claimed.

Atwood's work, which first saw the light of day as a novella titled The Penelopiad, quickly morphed into a stage-play under the same name – and now, after productions in Ottawa and Britain, it finally made its Toronto premiere Thursday in a production from Nightwood Theatre.

With Megan Follows in the title role, it, perhaps not surprisingly, relies heavily on the Greek model, even while it mocks it, sending it up with great if sardonic affection as part of the whacky world o' men.

Set in Hades and environs sometime after the death of all its protagonists, it's a familiar tale, despite being viewed through a new prism, as the deceased Penelope, tired of being used as "a stick to beat other women," reclaims her story and tells it from her perspective.

The first half of the two-hour tale delves into her childhood, her subsequent marriage to the short-shanked Odysseus (beautifully, even brilliantly played by Kelli Fox) and the affairs leading up to the Trojan War, with Pamela Sinha, doing a particularly delicious and bitchy take on the divine Helen.

Act II, meanwhile, concentrates on Penelope's stalwart post-war defence of the marriage bed, against the importuning of a bevy of suitors, eager to take over the kingdom of the missing and presumed dead Odysseus.

Woven throughout the story, however, is the under-told tale of the 12 handmaidens who aided and abetted Penelope in the warp and weft of her plotting, only to be unceremoniously strung-up by the returning Odysseus, a tragic misstep for which a less-than-trusting Penelope and her competition with the aged Eurycleia (Pat Hamilton) must share the blame.

In tackling the admittedly unconventional structure of the story, director Kelly Thornton marshals a strong sense of high theatricality and uses it to maximum effects, often aided by Denyse Karn's fanciful costume designs and her simple sets and the assured lighting design of Kimberly Purtell.

But while Thornton draws fine work from Follows and her 12-member chorus (Maev Beaty, Christine Brubaker, Raven Dauda, Sarah Dodd, Monica Dottor, Dara Gee, Tara Rosling, Sophia Walker and Bahia Watson round out the cast), she fails finally to fuse the diverse elements of Suba Sankaran's music and Dottor's choreography into her storytelling so that they sprout organically from the tale instead of merely being appended to it, like the shoulder horns sported by Penelope's suitors.

That said, these should be considered minor flaws indeed, in a production that is, by and large, a triumph, not merely in its determination to bring history to life, but in its success at redrawing and humanizing it as well.

In the end, it rings with a lot more human truth (his, hers or ours) than old Homer's Odyssey ever did.

Source: Toronto Sun

fab Magazine - January 13, 2012

"Sexual subversion strikes at Buddies. Again."
Brian Bantugan

The Penelopiad can be praised for many things – the maturity and subtlety of Megan Follows' performance as Penelope, the wit of the script, the clever staging, the whimsical costumes – but nothing is more exquisite than the gender ambiguity achieved during female-to-male role shifts and vice versa. And then there's some homoerotic imagery that's stimulating for straight guys, lesbians and in-betweeners. It's definitely queer despite the all-female cast and epic heterosexual storyline.

Megan Follows as Penelope is the funny girl you can take seriously. Helen of Troy (played by Pamela Sinha) becomes a self-assured temptress who challenges Penelope's insecure virginal naiveté. Their scenes take on a sitcom appeal or a Desperate Housewives feel without watering down the depth of character and storytelling inherent in Margaret Atwood's script. It becomes as contemporary as it is ancient, and the humour that bridges the context of both worlds is key. And yes, there are penises on women, too. Follows' Penelope, however, is large enough to not be choked by them.

The play is refreshing in that it is as hilarious as it is cerebral. The moments of sexual ambiguity among the maids walk the thin line that divides perfection and trying too much, and find that rare connection between comedy and tragedy. It also has that almost-there-but-not-yet phase of any orgasmic experience, where, for the most part, no one reaches the climax until Penelope says "Their legs don't move. Their still-twitching feet don't touch the ground." And everybody savours this moment till the lights fade out.

The script becomes even more meaningful as audiences witness women playing men who degrade women. In this play, the audience no longer sees just women who are victims of men, but also women who are victims of their state-of-being men. When one of the maids plays one of the suitors who rapes one of the maids, the play makes apparent that the maids have, in their submission to the domination of men -- or any aggressor for that matter -- become no different from their aggressors. They become equally responsible for the suffering of their own kind.

Director Kelly Thornton turns the serious material into delicious fare that stimulates everyone emotionally and intellectually. There's serious stuff going on when suitors bugging Penelope appear like bugs, and the maids weave the ropes that foreshadow their deaths. But when Odysseus takes us for a ride through the mind of a woman who longs for her husband, who has forced her into abstinence for 20 years, things are bound to get nutty -- to everyone's satisfaction. Thornton balances all these in such a way that audiences are easily drawn to take the exhilirating ride in and outside of Hades that eventually leaves them with much to think and smile about. More like the morning-after experience minus the regret or with thoughts of a second round.

Source: fab Magazine

The National Post - January 16, 2012

"Theatre Review: Buddies in Bad Times' Penelopiad is explosively funny"
Robert Cushman

It is to marvel: A few years ago, and with much fanfare, a stage version of Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad was jointly mounted by our National Arts Centre and Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company and proved stodgy and dull. Nightwood Theatre now addresses the same material and come up with a show that's vibrant, moving and darkly, explosively funny.

Some of the difference can be traced to the adaptation, which is credited to Atwood alone, and which seems to hew closer to the letter of her original than did its predecessor. It certainly makes a better job of preserving the spirit. Atwood's novella was her commissioned response to The Odyssey: the Homeric epic re-told from the point of view of the wandering hero's wife, Penelope, who remained chastely and patiently in their Ithacan palace during the 10 years her husband was away besieging Troy and the further 10 years it took him to get back home again. The chastity, in Atwood's version, is a point left moot; the patience definitely gets frayed. The dramatic time is the present, sort of.

Penelope, dead for millennia, tells us her story from the underworld. She recalls her girlhood, as the offspring of a king and a water nymph; and how she, a shy but observant adolescent, was married off to the man who won her in a footrace, despite having short legs. As mythical marriages go, it wasn't a bad one; Odysseus, Penelope appreciatively notes, was quite the communicator, at least when he was around.

The key event, though, is something that happened on his return home, disguised as a beggar. First, with the aid of a bow that only he could draw, he disposed of the hundred riotous suitors who'd been courting his wife and despoiling the kingdom. Then he ordered the hanging of a dozen palace maids who'd been sleeping with the intruders. Homer doesn't seem to have been bothered by this, but later generations have naturally been shocked. And so, it turns out, was Penelope. The maids – all slaves, of course – were only fraternizing with the suitors in the first place because she'd asked them to be her eyes and ears among them. The suitors, also of course, took brutal advantage. Now, in the afterlife, the maids' shades remain vexed; they will never stick around to talk to Penelope. Neither, wanderlust being apparently impervious to mortality, will Odysseus.

The all-female cast of 13 comprises Penelope and a chorus who step out to play everybody else, male and female. It's down to Megan Follows to set the tone as Penelope, and she sets and maintains it in a performance of exemplary grace and intelligence. Reversing tradition by entering in a puff of smoke (dry ice has seldom been more impressively employed) she addresses us as a woman who never stopped learning from experience and, even posthumously, is still doing so. Wryly, she summons up her own past innocence, suggesting that her early bemusement was even then tempered by an ironic awareness of her own situation. It seems that she could always see through Odysseus, even while loving him. When he goes away she learns to govern because, as she says, she had to; and we never doubt her capacity.

Follows' technical achievement alone is remarkable; in a packed witty text, not a line or a point gets past her. She was still surprising me into laughter, right up till the end. As sharp as her humour, and as fastidiously conveyed, is her pain; especially when coloured with guilt as, having been off stage when it happened, she hears of the fate of the maids. She also looks lovely throughout. This might be called a post-tragic performance, bearably wounded, eternally quizzical.

It's an ineradicable flaw in the piece that, though the maids are crucial, we don't get to know them, collectively or individually, till the second half: an improvement on the previous production where we never got to know them at all. The ladies of Hades include some major talents, some of them – Maev Beaty, Tara Rosling, Sarah Dodd – under-used, at least as soloists.

Of those who do get chances, Kelli Fox's bantam Odysseus is a wonderfully brisk and chipper opportunist, considerate in short bursts. Pamela Sinha supplies some devastating punctuation as the unforgivably bewitching Helen whose looks, her cousin Penelope hears with satisfaction, Finally begin to decay; Bahia Watson is a delight as her son Telemachus who brings her that news; Cara Gee has a piercing speech as the first of the maids to be despoiled; and Pat Hamilton is a riot as the Odysseus family nurse, doing the patriarchy's work for it. (She takes especial delight in relating that the girls sacrificed were the youngest and most beautiful).

The ensemble function beautifully together under Kelly Thornton's direction; even the dances, choreographed by Monica Dottor, are both decorative and helpful. The composer, Suba Sankaran, supplies a rollicking sea shanty to take care of Odysseus' wayfarings, from Cyclops to Circe. The only false visual note is struck by some peculiar headgear and near-headgear; the suitors seem to have antlers growing out of their shoulders. Otherwise the production, lit by Kimberly Purtell looks, as it sounds, a treat. With this and Robert Lepage's The Blue Dragon in a single week, the year is off to a wonderful start.

Source: The National Post

TorontoStage.com - January 16, 2012

"A Stylized Examination of Marriage and Murder"
Steven Berketo

Even if sub-zero temperatures and a full-blown blizzard were to siege the city of Toronto over the next two weeks, nothing could diminish the toasty Mediterranean setting on Alexander Street where Nightwood Theatre's girl power production of The Penelopiad gusts with warm creative winds. A 2012 Dora Award contender is in our midst and it's going to be a tough one to match.

Some marital unions sail on much higher seas than others. Through song and motion, The Penelopiad relies on thirteen of the city's most talented femme fatale performers to redesign tragedy and melodrama.

Director Kelly Thornton serves notice that she means business in the opening moments of the play when a thick layer of fog rolls forward from a rising curtain. The atmospheric nuances and physical fatuity that follow are stark reminders that innovation is by no means a lost art.

A fusion of comedic wit and daring dramatic episodes establishes a vibrant visual vibe not seen or felt around these parts for a long spell.

The Penelopiad, a theatrical re-invention of author Margaret Atwood's take on The Odyssey, is a stylized examination of marriage and murder. It's a cleverly woven presentation topped with sporadic giggle fodder as the narrative tracks the mythical journey of Penelope (Megan Follows) who copes with a life as a not-so-single mother for 20 years when her husband Odysseus (Kelli Fox) heads off to war.

There are some extraordinary funny scenes in the play including an erection parade that plunges into a pool in hot pursuit of a seductive young cousin.

Yet throbbingly good performances by an all-star cast is what makes this a most memorable experience.

Megan Follows is a perfect fit as a near perfect wife in what could be her best Toronto stage work to date. Kelli Fox's lines are minimal as a combat crusader demanding absolute fidelity but she gets the job done with her mere presence alone. What's more, the acting duo is untouchable in their delivery right up until the suitor slaying/house maid hanging conclusion.

A period play with modern day appeal, The Penelopiad is what happens when theatre's critical elements come together in sublime harmony. Missing this one would greatly offend the theatre gods.

Source: TorontoStage.com