The Peddie Community Players bring Mary Zimmerman’s twisted version of ‘The Odyssey’ to the stage in Hightstown.
By: Susan Van Dongen
Homer’s epic The Odyssey is kind of the ultimate "road trip," a tale created long, long before there was such a concept. The hero, Odysseus, has been away during a long, bitter war and is trying to get home to his grieving Penelope, but confronts obstacle after obstacle.
Director Rick Joyce, who became enamored with Mary Zimmerman’s adaptation of The Odyssey when it was staged at McCarter Theatre in 2000, thinks it’s more like an action movie, with everything from combat to monsters.
"People may hear ‘The Odyssey’ and think, ‘Oh, I read that in school, am I interested enough to go see a play about this?’" Mr. Joyce says. "But it really is like an action movie. It has a huge journey, it has battles, sex, monsters, gods, death, humor and even drugs. Odysseus has to save his sailors through all this adversity.
"It’s not a dusty historical drama where people stand around and talk," he continues. "’The Odyssey’ is much more visceral, imaginative, playful and emotional than you would expect. There’s a reason this story has been around for 2,000 years. It’s exciting."
The Peddie Community Players, under the direction of Mr. Joyce, will present Ms. Zimmerman’s The Odyssey at the Peddie School’s Mount-Burke Theater in Hightstown July 7 to 16. Mr. Joyce, who directed Songs for a New World at the Peddie School in 2003, is pleased to be presenting Ms. Zimmerman’s adaptation, which he describes as an "open invitation for actors to play."
The drama begins with a modern young woman who is struggling to understand Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of The Odyssey. A classical muse appears and the young woman is transformed into the goddess Athena a tireless advocate for Odysseus in his struggle to get home. With her trademark irreverent and witty twist on classic works, Ms. Zimmerman brings to life the story of Odysseus’ 10-year journey, depicting his encounters with characters such as the Cyclops, Poseidon, Calypso and the Sirens.
"As a director, you wonder how you can keep classics from being dusty and kind of textbook, but Mary Zimmerman makes it very lively," Mr. Joyce says. "For example, Hermes, the messenger of the gods, comes riding in on a bicycle, like a bike messenger in New York with a bag on his shoulder. You get the point, but it also makes you smile. And it helps tell the story, instead of just having a guy in a toga saying ‘I’m Hermes, here’s a message for you.’
"There’s another moment in the play where Odysseus has to steer his boat past the sirens, who are fabled for being irresistible to men, and in previous plays or movies, the sirens would simply lure the sailors," he continues. "But in Mary’s version, the sirens speak directly to the men in the audience, in a very funny, sexy way. So the audience is in the position of the sailors in the boat. To deal with each of these scenes and ideas in a way like this makes the play very unexpected."
Mr. Joyce says the rights for theater groups like his to stage Ms. Zimmerman’s version of The Odyssey have only become available recently. He and his colleagues at Peddie have been looking forward to their chance to produce the show.
"We all saw it at McCarter and we’ve also been to New York to see other things by Mary Zimmerman, like ‘Metamorphoses’ and ‘The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,’" he says. "But ‘The Odyssey’ was the first thing of hers that I’d ever seen. It was one of those unforgettable nights at the theater. It was electric among the best things I’ve ever seen at McCarter, so striking in every way. The way Mary’s theatrical imagination works, it managed to be both timeless and very current. Really, really great theater."
The Peddie Community Players are putting their own twist on Ms. Zimmerman’s already twisted tale. Mr. Joyce says the Cyclops, for example, is quite different from Ms. Zimmerman’s concept and will be appropriately "big and scary."
"We took this text and tried to make it our own," he says. "These are not just my own ideas. The fun thing about working in an ensemble is bouncing things back and forth between the performers, which can take you to some unexpected places."
The cast of 11 men and eight women cover multiple roles to tell the epic story. Mr. Joyce says the label "community players" belies the breadth of the cast’s experience. They’re strong actors, not only from central New Jersey but from New York, people the director knows from the masters in fine arts program at the New School for Drama in New York.
"Why are people willing to drive down from New York to rehearse?" Mr. Joyce says. "Because it’s really exciting theater, the kind of thing an actor will make a commute for. So it’s a nice mix between homegrown and ‘imported’ talent.
"One of the things we’re doing differently from Mary Zimmerman’s production is that we’ll be creating our own music," he continues. "The adaptation at McCarter had an excellent recorded score that Mary commissioned. But we have a talented bunch of performers playing different instruments. We accompany ourselves."
Mr. Joyce, a Princeton resident, had been employed in Hong Kong as a partner for the management consulting firm Accenture. The opportunity came to leave the financial world and return to the United States; that’s when Mr. Joyce began pursuing his dream to become more involved in theatrical direction. He recently received his master’s in fine arts degree in directing from the New School.
In addition to Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World, Mr. Joyce has directed a number of successful shows on the Peddie stage.
A 2002 Tony Award winner and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (the "genius grant"), Ms. Zimmerman wrote and directed Metamorphoses and The Secret in the Wings, produced at McCarter last winter. She also adapted and directed The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, among many other outstanding works.
When Bill Moyers was still hosting Now, he interviewed Ms. Zimmerman about storytelling, how and why these ancient tales resonate with us thousands of years after they were created. The interview echoed Moyers’ monumental conversations with Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth series on PBS. Moyers asked Ms. Zimmerman about the human consciousness of mortality, and if she believed this was the root of all suffering.
"If we didn’t know that (we were going to die), then maybe that wouldn’t be the problem in the way that I’m not sure animals know it," Ms. Zimmerman said. "But the fact that we know it and that frightens us and we’re impermanent and that scares us it’s just difficult. That loss is part of our life, growing older, and that’s what these myths are really about. Life equals change, it equals loss. And you have to embrace it."
Mr. Joyce adds that The Odyssey has special significance for him now.
"At the most basic level, it’s the story of a soldier’s longing for home, and his long journey there," he says. "With soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, ‘The Odyssey’ is even more timely than when the McCarter production ran in 2000."
The Odyssey, directed by Rick Joyce, will be performed by the Peddie Community
Players at Mount-Burke Theater, Peddie School, South Main Street, Hightstown,
July 7-16. Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $12. For information,
call (609) 490-7550. On the Web: www.peddie.org/capps