The Penelopiad
At the Stanley until Nov. 20
Tickets: 604.687.1644, artsclub.com
How does she do it? How does petite, apple-cheeked Meg Roe transform herself so completely, so gracefully into witty, regal Penelope, wife of Odysseus? The upswept hairdo helps, as does the ice-blue fading to darker blue, cross-your-heart gown. But it's mostly Roe herself: her queenly bearing, her well-modulated voice, and her pretty, lilting laugh. Remember her amazingly funny interpretive dance and drunken scene when she was Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And think back on her as Dull Gret stuffing dinner rolls into her bag in Top Girls. Or her spectacular directing debut at Bard on the Beach's The Tempest. Roe can do it all, and we can only hope that Vancouver's much touted sea-to-sky scenery can keep her here because, frankly, she could make it really big on any stage, anywhere.
The Penelopiad, adapted by Margaret Atwood from her novel of the same name, can use someone like Roe to provide an anchor for what is an odd duck.
If you read The Penelopiad when it came out in 2005, don't re-read it before seeing the play. If you haven't read it, don't read it before going. The play is quite different, much darker, less flippant and seems to score some different points. In Atwood's book, for instance, the returning Odysseus hangs Penelope's 12 maids and he's obviously the bad guy. In the play, Penelope spends her afterlife wandering around Hades, chastising herself for her failure to protect those maids. Atwood appears to be commenting on the passivity of women as opposed to trashing the warring, whoring nature of our mythological heroes. At least, that's the way the book reads.
Set and light design by Terry Gunvordahl make this an absolute treat to look at. Bathed in blue light, dozens of pale ropes hang from the flies-a forecast of the hanging to come. Deitra Kalyn dresses the maids in beige, homespun smocks and leggings; when some of them are transformed into other characters, the top of the dress is rolled down and a headdress or some such adornment is added. Only Laara Sadiq, as the beautiful but snooty Helen of Troy, sheds the drab cotton to swan around in a slinky, scarlet gown. Sadiq, beautiful as ever, makes a gorgeously nasty Helen, constantly putting down her cousin Penelope, referring to her condescendingly as "ducky."
Colleen Wheeler, when not one of the unfortunate maids, is an astonishingly sexy, hunky Odysseus, and the bedroom scenes with Penelope are amazingly erotic. She lumbers, she glowers but she's all gentleman in bed.
Lois Anderson, when not a maid is nursemaid to Telemachus, Penelope's son. With one shoulder lifted and one arm tucked up high against her ribs, she appears to be arthritic as well as conniving. Dawn Petten is under-employed in The Penelopiad but even in the smaller roles, she's terrific: a soldier bent on rape, a sailor doing something that looks like the Hornpipe or one of Penelope's increasingly frustrated suitors.
Completing the cast are Rachel Aberle, Sarah Donald (also on violin), Ming Hudson (as Telemachus), Megan Leitch (Penelope's Naiad mother), Lopa Sircar and Quelemia Sparrow. Eleven women: thank you Margaret Atwood.
Directed by Vanessa Porteous, The Penelopiad takes the mickey out of The Odyssey. It's political in a sly, offbeat, Atwoodian way and has, at its narrative centre, the amazing Roe who turns what has been dubbed, "The Ladies in Hades" (they are, of course, all dead) into something heavenly.
