Journey Into Night

In 2005, as part of a series of re-imagined myths, Margaret Atwood wrote The Penelopiad as a companion to the classic The Odyssey. From the perspective of Penelope, Atwood gave voice to the powerless and forgotten women especially the 12 young slaves that Odysseus hung upon his return because they "polluted" his house.

Last year, Nightwood Theatre mounted this work as a play. With so much positive reactions, they have remounted it. On Saturday, I saw this powerful piece of theatre and myth with a sold-out audience at Buddies In Bad Times. On a darkened stage, Penelope (Megan Follows) entered through billowing, white curtains. We were in Hades, and having made her usual rounds through the fields of Asphodel, Penelope will tell us her life story from her perspective. It won't be a pleasant one, as her monologue was interrupted by her 12 hand-maidens, each with a noose around her neck, chanting a dirge about their eventual fate.

So we followed her through re-enactments from her life: her cold inhuman Naiad mother (Fiona Byrne) and a gruff father Icarius (Audrey Dwyer) who tried to drown her as a baby, her marriage to wily Odysseus (Kelli Fox), her rough relationships with her in-laws Laertes (Maev Beaty), Anticleia (Sarah Dodd), and Odysseus' old nurse Eurycleia (Patricia Hamilton), and her competitive interactions with the ravishing Helen (Pamela Sinha). Through each phase, we came to realize that her life was often at someone's whim. But it was also made clear by the female chorus how much worse was the life of a non-aristocratic woman.

The second act was harrowing as Penelope tried to fend off boorish suitors and raise Telemachus (Neema Bickersteth) while Odysseus was away for 20 years. There were stirring scenes such as when Penelope named her hand-maidens and enlisted them to keep the interlopers at bay, but also scenes of violence and sexual assault that may even be triggering. Patriarchy hurts everyone, but it absolute destroys poor, lower-class women.

The actresses, who doubly and even triply played all the roles from the main characters, the maids, and the suitors were excellent. The inventive set and costumes were often used in multiple ways too. For example, Odysseus cape became his ship's sail. There were intense scenes, but there were also lots of irreverent and even contemporary humour. Suba Sankaran's music and songs were folkloric and often disquieting.

The only fault for me was the problematic conclusion. Atwood introduced a detail that, in some small way, allowed Penelope, Odysseus, Eurycleia, and Telemachus to figuratively deny their full complicity and responsibility in the unjust deaths of the maids. I think Atwood pulled her punch and took a tiny bit of agency away from them by introducing an element of careless fate.

Why did Atwood allowed her upper-class characters to take on some measure of victimhood? Well, patriarchy is not just about "men vs women", it is mainly about the privileged vs. the unprivileged. She has more in common with Penelope and Odysseus than the women slaves; so I think that given this more accusatory critique of patriarchy, she unconsciously (and it is often about unexamined privileges) flinched and gave them an out.