The Studio Theatre is beginning New Ireland: The Enda Walsh Festival with one of Walsh’s most provocative and entertaining plays, “Penelope.” Performed by the acclaimed Druid Theatre Company, “Penelope” proves not only the staying power of an ancient myth but also the compelling nature of an intelligent modern voice. Walsh’s play is set on the Greek island where Ulysses’ wife, Penelope, is waiting for him to return from the Trojan War. As in Homer’s original, Penelope scorns the suitors who vie for her hand, being convinced that Ulysses will return.
| ONSTAGE |
| ‘Penelope’ |
| » Where: Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. |
| » When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; 2:30 p.m. Sundays; through April 3 |
| » Info: $44 to $65, 202-332-3300, studiotheatre.org |
In Walsh’s imaginative setting, Penelope’s home is an elevated glass structure looking off to sea. Next to the house, the last four suitors live in a drained swimming pool, drinking, fighting, trying to make a barbecue work. They have had a shared dream that, on Odysseus’ return, they will all die unless they can get Penelope to marry one of them.
With his extraordinary ability to create a verbal roller-coaster ride of emotions and attitudes, Walsh offers a humorous picture of ageing, self-absorbed men, feeling life skidding out of control, anxious to explain themselves, desperate to go on living. Under the careful direction of Mikel Murfi, Walsh’s text is a highly polished, eloquent salute to tragicomedy.
Quinn (Karl Shiels) is a true alpha male in a red Speedo who is convinced that his body is still as attractive as it was 20 years earlier. Shiels is particularly entertaining when he appears as all the great lovers in the world in rapid succession: Romeo and Juliet, Napoleon and Josephine, Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler.
The polar opposite of brash and bossy Quinn, the scholarly Fitz (Niall Buggy) delivers a moving, lyrical ode to his past, to loneliness and to literature. The hammy, pompous Dunne (Denis Conway) allows himself to get carried away with bravado and protestations of adoration. But it is the youngest and least aggressive member of the group, Burns (Aaron Monaghan), who offers Penelope the only promises of hope: compassion, friendship, honesty.
Olga Wehrly, who plays Penelope, appears infrequently to hear the men’s pleas, and her body language is a comment on what the men are (or are not) saying. Penelope sits looking away most of the time, but when Fitz speaks, she turns to face him. When Burns speaks, she comes out of her house and descends toward the pool.
Sabine Dargent’s set provides a brilliant blue sky beyond Penelope’s house. Her pool is a tacky, filthy hovel of brownish green tiles. It’s the perfect holding area for four lost souls who are sure to go up in flames as soon as Ulysses arrives home and gets that barbecue working again.
