A new play, The Penelopiad – The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus, by Margaret Atwood, is on its way to premiere at the Carlton Courthouse this June.
In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope is the famously faithful wife waiting for Odysseus to return from the Trojan War.
In her new play, Atwood brings Penelope centre stage, as a star now speaking from the Underworld 3,000 years later.
She tells a wickedly funny story of surviving a flaky family, of her angst as a teenage bride being handed over to Odysseus “like a gilded blood pudding”, of her cousin, Helen of Troy, “who should have been kept in a locked trunk in a dark cellar”, of power-hungry suitors and the backwash of war.
If Odysseus is famous for being foxy, then Atwood’s Penelope is even foxier. The play goes to the Underworld beyond the grave to show us the hilarious as well as the brutal side of love and war in the palace at Ithaca. It creates a parallel universe to the traditional heroics of Homer, in which we see these events through different eyes.
Man Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood is a big name of contemporary literature, with more than forty works published.
The Penelopiad will be performed at The Stork Theatre, at La Mama Courthouse (349 Drummond Street Carlton, between Faraday & Elgin Streets), from Wednesday 19 June till Sunday 7 July. For more information and phone bookings, contact 03 9410 0295.