The Greek classics. The rhapsodies of the Ancient Greeks. Some of the oldest extant prose of the Western World. A fundament of the modern Western canon…
…And it’s filth, all of it. Cannibalism, bestiality, incest and that’s just for starters.
One of the most famous raconteurs of tall Grecian tales was Homer (no, not that Homer, the Hellenistic balladeer Homer). Back in about 750 BCE (750BC in old money) he wrote two famous Epic poems.
Or rather he might have written them if he really existed. Homer, I mean. There’s some debate on the topic. A bit like Santa Claus.
The latter poem, the difficult second album after his hit poem ‘The Ilyad’, was ‘The Odyssey’. It’s a rambling, drawn-out tale of King Odysseus’ decade-long voyage back home after ten years’ fighting in the Trojan Wars. On the way back he encounters Sirens, Cyclopes, witches, mermaids and ghost before getting back home, twenty-years late, to his wife, Penelope. There’s no record of what her first words to him were, but I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t something along the lines of: “And where the **** do you think you’ve been?!?”
Odysseus visited many strange lands during his travels. But never Swindon. This shameful omission was put right last night when knockabout Bristolian theatre troop, ‘Living Spit’, visited the Town with their comedy musical retelling of the legendary saga.
Living Spit have a built a storied reputation by taking classic stories and rolling them in the glitter of unruly silliness. On this occasion they’re joined on stage by celebrated chanteuse and cabaret artiste Kate Dimbleby and instrumentalist Sam Mills. Together they embraced Homer’s pendulous narrative, throw in a healthy sprinkling of clowning, music and profanity and manage to play out Odysseus’ twenty-year crusade in a rather more manageable one hundred and ten minutes.
Howard Coggins plays his Odysseus as a likably weary and bumptious figure who spends his time fighting off fearsome monsters with one hand and lustful enchantresses with the other, while simply wanting to return home to his much-missed wife. He’s amply supported by Stu McLoughlin playing Anonymous Minion 1, the King’s bumbling shipmate, as well as numerous other seamen and phantasmagoria. His vampish and randy cameo as Calypso, the sorceress who traps Odysseus as her sex slave on an island for six years, is worth the entry fee alone.
But giving perhaps the best value came from Kate Dimbleby’s as Penelope. In the original poem Odysseus’ abandoned wife is a peripheral character, but here she’s a proud, despondent, but defiant figure who refuses to welcome her adventurous spouse back without a bloody good explanation.
Mixing catchy and diverse song and inspired idiocy with moments of almost unbearable pathos, Living Spit’s Odyssey is a joyful romp through an ancient adventure almost as old as civilisation itself. This was only the group’s second sortie into Swindon. They’ll be welcome back again.
