Theatrical performance of Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, a feminist reimagining of Homer's Odyssey, presented at York Theatre Royal.
The Penelopiad runs at York Theatre Royal from 10 October to 24 October, a two-week stint that brings Margaret Atwood's stage adaptation of her 2005 novel to the city. It's a feminist retelling of Homer's Odyssey, and it does exactly what the title suggests: it gives the story back to Penelope. Instead of Odysseus being the one telling the tale, Penelope takes the lead, joined by a chorus of her maids. Together they recount the twenty years he was away, reimagining the old myth from the perspective of the women left behind.
Atwood, the Booker Prize winner behind The Handmaid's Tale, adapted the book for the stage herself. The production is described as a lush, witty, fast-paced visual feast, and it doesn't shy away from the darker side of the story. It works its way through themes of injustice, betrayal, and revenge, questioning the versions of the myth we've grown up with and filling in the gaps that the original left out. If you've read the novel, it's a chance to see it breathe on stage; if you've only ever known the Odyssey from the Greek side, this is a very different way into it.
There's a bit of theatre history to this one, too. This is the first major UK revival of the play since it premiered in 2007 at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, which was a co-production between the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Arts Centre of Canada. It's been nearly two decades since that first run, so this is the first time the play has returned to a big UK stage in a long while.
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It runs from 10 October through to 24 October at York Theatre Royal, so you've got a couple of weeks to fit it in.
