Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✩✩
by Euripides, adapted and directed by Jessie Fraser
Children of Wine, Toronto Fringe Festival, Honest Ed’s Loading Bay, Toronto
July 6-17, 2011
Students learn about Greek tragedy in school with little or no mention of satyr plays. Perhaps teachers fear it will undercut the grandiose vision of Greek drama, but it is still a fact that after every trilogy of tragedies presented at the festival of Dionysus was a short comic play, called a satyr play, written by the same author on the same subject as the tragedies but treating it with ribald humour. Only one complete satyr play survives and that is Cyclops written about 428bc by Euripides. The chance to see such a rarity at all is reason enough to get yourself down to the acting space set up in the loading bay just behind Honest Ed’s. It’s 40 minutes of ancient, silly fun.
Cyclops is based on one of the best-known episodes of the Odyssey when Odysseus stops at Sicily in search of provisions only to be captured along with twelve of his crew by the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, who has no scruples about eating human flesh. Odysseus gets Polyphemus drunk and then blinds him saying that “No Man” did it. When the enraged giant roars to his brothers that “No Man” did him this injury, they laugh at him. While the story is one of the best demonstrations of Odysseus’ renowned cleverness, Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, asks his father to curse Odysseus and his men and, indeed, that curse lengthens the Greeks’ return home to ten years.
Euripides alters the Homer’s account by having Silenus, father of the satyrs, and his children held as captives by Polyphemus. This is pretty much the ancient Greek equivalent of adding the Three Stooges to the story. The satyrs--half-man, half-goat--are male devotés of Dionysus, both as god of wine and of sensual abandon, and serve as chorus. Their most noteworthy sign, made much of in this production, are their enormous protruding phalli. As Euripides presents it, service to Polyphemus has deprived Silenus and his brood both of wine and of any non-ovine relief for their perpetual priapism.
Director Jessie Fraser gives the audience the role of the cyclops’s sheep. As we’re waiting for the play to start, we’re herded into a sheep pen and are there addressed by Silenus (Joe Mottola), who tells us of their woes. Soon we hear the squeals of five of his children running up the back driveway playing rugby (or worse) with a stuffed sheep. Then the noble Odysseus (Dan Leberg) arrives with his ship hanging from his shoulders and waves hanging from the ship. His silent men are represented by Jeremy Parkes with his head through a board with likenesses of himself on either side. Odysseus brings the gift of wine and expects provisions in return, but at the approach of Polyphemus (Kiersten Tough on stilts), we are herded amongst the rocks of the cyclops’s cave near Mount Edna [sic] and the satyrs hide with us.
The design by Daniele Guevara and the costumes by Breeyn McCarney are very imaginative considering the show was created on a tiny budget. The rough-and-ready quality of the production and performances are quite endearing. Besides her skill in stilt-walking, Tough makes Polyphemus’ bluster very funny. Her cries of “Ow!” after the blinding (in Fraser’s adaptation) help make a gruesome situation humorous. Most of the humour, however, comes from Leberg’s Odysseus who remains totally unfazed by all the raunchiness of the satyrs or the dire threats of the cyclops. His heroic stance, despite his too-short tunic, and his noble, rounded tones remind one of Graham Chapman as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, maintaining his dignity in the face of the lunacy about him.
In 1997 the Stratford Festival staged Sophocles’ Oedipus and made up a satyr play to accompany it. It’s really too bad that it did not think of staging Cyclops, since not only is the play authentic but it also could serve as a comic view of the theme of blinding. The noisy venue and inadequate seating are certainly not ideal, but with such an entertaining version of the play so close at hand, you really should not miss it.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Kiersten Tough as the Cyclops. ©2011.
For Tickets, visit www.fringetoronto.com.
2011-07-16
Euripides’ Cyclops