Megan Follows stars in Margaret Atwood's revamp of The Odyssey.
The Odyssey is one of the great dude-centric works of Western literature. Homer’s epic poem celebrates the manly exploits of the wandering warrior-king Odysseus, who spends 20 years abroad with his mates, battling Trojans and sea monsters and boinking the occasional goddess. His wife, Penelope, meanwhile, waits faithfully back home in Ithaca, where she fends off importunate suitors and tries to keep their grubby paws off his kingdom.
Enter CanLit icon Margaret Atwood, who finally gives the wife’s side of the story in her novella turned play The Penelopiad. A shrewd revisionist take on the Odysseus myth, it’s narrated by Penelope, whom Atwood envisions not as a paragon of patience, but as a desperate housewife struggling to survive.
“Atwood does it with an extraordinary amount of intelligence, but also with humour,” says Megan Follows, who stars as Penelope in Nightwood Theatre’s highly anticipated production of The Penelopiad—the play’s professional Toronto debut. The powerhouse all-female cast is led by the 43-year-old Follows, who’s still beloved for her role as a certain irrepressible red-haired orphan in the ’80s television miniseries Anne of Green Gables.
“Penelope is represented throughout history as the model of the chaste wife,” Follows says, as she grabs a quick chili-and-salad lunch with Nightwood artistic director Kelly Thornton in the company’s Distillery District headquarters. “But in her first monologue she says, ‘Don’t follow my example!’”
In Atwood’s version, Penelope recounts her story from Hades, where she remains haunted, literally, by her 12 handmaids—hanged on Odysseus’s orders after his return because they’d had sex with the suitors. Penelope failed to save the women, who were loyally protecting their mistress; their presence in Hades is a continual reminder of her culpability. Only minor figures in The Odyssey, the maids are central to The Penelopiad. Atwood treats them sympathetically, as slaves and rape victims, and gives them voices by turning them into a Greek chorus to comment on Penelope’s tale.
Director Thornton sees their mass murder in a chilling contemporary context. “We’ve talked about it as an honour killing,” she says. “In order to uphold his honour and reputation, Odysseus must purge his house, not only of the suitors, but of these ‘dirty whores.’ The sad thing is, they’re all waiting for him to come home—the hero who’s going to save them all.”
Although it has a dark core, the play crackles with Atwood’s dry wit. Despite their fate, the maids are a lively lot. Their choral sections are delivered in an array of styles, from a playground rhyme to a folk song to a sea shanty. Before breaking for lunch, the Nightwood cast was busy rehearsing one of the sections, conceived by Thornton as a Kurt Weill–inspired song-and-dance number with music by the show’s sound designer, Suba Sankaran.
Thornton says it’s a joy to be working with a cast of 13 women. A Canadian play that size would be a gamble for any small theatre company, regardless of the actors’ gender, but having Margaret Atwood’s name attached to it is a box-office guarantee.
“I got about a thousand résumés when I was auditioning for this production,” Thornton says, “and ended up seeing about 100 women.” She was able to build an A-list ensemble, ranging from Shaw Festival star Tara Rosling to Follows’ Anne of Green Gables cast-mate Patricia Hamilton.
This marks the first time Follows has worked with Nightwood, Canada’s leading women’s theatre, but the match seemed inevitable. Although she still does plenty of television, she’s been increasingly drawn back to the stage and to plays by women, in particular. In the last few years, local audiences have seen her in Caryl Churchill’s feminist classics Top Girls and Cloud Nine, and Marsha Norman’s ’night, Mother.
“It’s exciting to work with women playwrights,” Follows says. Especially when they take women’s lives—so often a footnote in history and literature—and place them centre-stage, as The Penelopiad does with the long-suffering ladies of The Odyssey. “I just love the idea of retelling this etched-in-stone, iconic tale from the birth of Western civilization,” she enthuses. “I love the boldness of Ms. Atwood coming in and saying, ‘Um, let’s look at this from another angle.’”
The Penelopiad opens Jan. 10 and runs to Jan. 29 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (12 Alexander St.), 416-975-8555, buddiesinbadtimes.com.
Penelope’s odyssey
The novella
In 2005, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad is published as part of the Canongate Myth Series, featuring new versions of classic myths by contemporary authors.
The staged reading
To launch the book in the U.K., Atwood and British director Phyllida Lloyd devise a staged reading with Atwood in the role of Penelope. It encourages Atwood to turn the story into a play.
The premiere
An NAC/Royal Shakespeare Company co-production, The Penelopiad has its British premiere in Stratford-upon-Avon in July 2007 and its Canadian debut in Ottawa that September.
Subsequent performances
In Canada, the play has since been produced by Calgary’s Alberta Theatre Projects (2010) and Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre (2011).
