Wes­ley Gib­bings

Derek Wal­cott's the­atri­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Homer's epic po­em The Odyssey was clear­ly nev­er meant to be easy go­ing for any­one. Some say even Homer's feath­ers might have been ruf­fled at the dra­mat­ic lib­er­ties tak­en by the St Lu­cian po­et/play­wright with the clas­sic tale of trav­els and tra­vails writ­ten near the end of the eighth cen­tu­ry BC.

The No­bel lau­re­ate's some­times dense verse and oblique metaphor, span­ning close to three hours in its orig­i­nal ren­di­tion, are not eas­i­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed by even the more ex­pe­ri­enced Wal­cot­tians such as drama­tist, Che Ro­driguez, who plays Odysseus in the UTT Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (APA) pro­duc­tion, much less for the grad­u­at­ing class of tal­ent­ed, young thes­pi­ans un­der the hands of di­rec­tor, Mar­vin Ish­mael.

Ish­mael, whose cre­den­tials in­clude Hol­ly­wood act­ing roles and his work as UTT as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor, how­ev­er man­aged to gen­er­ate suf­fi­cient cre­ative space for an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Wal­cott work that both stim­u­lat­ed the imag­i­na­tions of the large­ly young cast and kept a knowl­edge­able au­di­ence at the Na­pa en­gaged on April 9.

"This pro­duc­tion," Ish­mael says in the pro­gramme, "pays trib­ute to the faith­ful­ness of the Caribbean woman and the jour­ney of the Caribbean male back to his right­ful place � to home, cul­ture and love."

"It de­lights in the para­dox of the woman be­ing temptress and sav­ior, our crown­ing glo­ry and our down­fall," he says.

Wal­cott's cre­ative man­age­ment of Homer's orig­i­nal plot, pro­vid­ing a Caribbean, of­ten ab­sur­dist, flavour pro­vid­ed fair game for fur­ther ex­ploita­tion by the UTT play­ers who worked with col­leagues in the Acad­e­my's mu­sic, dance and tech­ni­cal units.

De­scribed by some as a Caribbean-lo­cat­ed par­o­dy on an old Greek tale re­lat­ed in po­et­ry, Wal­cott's ver­sion opens pos­si­bil­i­ties for even fur­ther con­tem­po­rary re-telling of the sto­ry of the jour­neys of Odysseus, lord of the Greek is­land of Itha­ca, who leaves by ship to fight in the Tro­jan War for ten years, is ship-wrecked and spends a fur­ther ten years wan­der­ing in search of a way back home.

The minute Michael Cher­rie, play­ing Blind Bil­lie Blue, us­es the word "cy­at" in the open­ing scene, a gig­gling au­di­ence braces for an ex­tra­or­di­nary jour­ney. But, for the most part not many more lib­er­ties are tak­en, ex­cept that the gi­ant Cy­clops ap­pears as a pro­ject­ed im­age on the wall and one ex­ple­tive ap­peared to ran­kle a small sec­tion of the packed au­di­ence.

The fight se­quences re­sem­ble Brazil­ian Capoeira and Circe and her nymphs, who lead Odysseus' crew around like leashed pigs, dance and wine tempt­ing­ly.

A live­ly, orig­i­nal mu­si­cal score with dance se­quences em­ploy­ing a va­ri­ety of cre­ative props came to­geth­er to bring added life to a per­for­mance that ex­plod­ed at times with youth­ful en­er­gy. Charis­sa Sealey is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly con­vinc­ing in dual roles as Odysseus' wife Pene­lope and as He­len and Re­nee King is out­stand­ing as Nau­si­caa and An­ti­clea.

More ac­com­plished com­men­ta­tors have not­ed Wal­cott's em­ploy­ment of dual roles to pro­vide con­ti­nu­ity in the nar­ra­tive of out­ward and in­ward jour­ney. The orig­i­nal script calls for three pairs, but Ish­mael ex­pands the con­cept. An­drea Co­dring­ton plays mul­ti­ple roles, in­clud­ing that of the god­dess Athena, while vet­er­an play­er, Michael Cher­rie, is Blind Bil­lie Blue, De­mod­ocus and the Philoso­pher.

Ro­driguez is at his bril­liant best and, as guest artist, pro­vides ex­pert ex­am­ples of dra­mat­ic tim­ing and de­liv­ery. Eu­ge­nia Lemo as Circe does jus­tice to the part while Lev­ee Ro­driguez, last mem­o­rably seen in The Rose Slip, is Odysseus' son Telemachus, dou­bling as as­sis­tant ship cap­tain, Eu­ry­lochus.

Dance chore­og­ra­phy for the play was the work of Tevin Daniel, Tichele Fer­raz, Omari An­der­son, Ni­ka Gasperez and Sime­on Pe­ters.

Orig­i­nal mu­sic was com­posed by Mark-An­tho­ny Pierre, James Joseph, Jeuelle Archer, Jo­hann De Fre­itas and Re­nal­do Ra­mai with stage man­age­ment by Ni­ka Gas­parez and cos­tume de­sign by Paulette Al­fred, Zamo­ra Sim­mons and Daniel­la Wal­cott who al­so served as wardrobe man­ag­er.

"The jour­ney of The Odyssey has been an ex­cit­ing one for our cast," Ish­mael says. "Noth­ing is im­pos­si­ble if we can think it vi­su­al­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and ver­bal­ly."

This is a pro­duc­tion wor­thy of an en­core.