By Donald H. Harrison
EL CAJON, California — As we Jews get ready to gather around our seder tables to tell again the story of the biblical Exodus, 16 Grossmont College performers are enacting another famous journey of ancient times, that of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, hero of Troy, and long-lost sailor struggling to get home.
The Odyssey will be presented again at the campus’s compact Stagehouse Theatre on Thursday, March 21, through Saturday, March 23, with tickets available through the box office at (619)644-7234.
Not unlike the Passover seders in many homes, there are times when the timeless tale of the Odyssey seems to drag on and on, particularly in this Mary Zimmerman adaptation of Homer’s story. But at other times, as in the seder, there is action, excitement and our interest is riveted.
Director Beth Duggan, who chairs Grossmont’s theater arts department, and the cast worked hard overcoming a script with narrations within narrations and too many beginnings and too many endings. There were so many characters that each cast member had to play an average of four. My grandson Shor and I saw the actors in so many different roles in such rapid succession that it was easy at a performance on Saturday, March 16, to confuse just who 14 of them were supposed to be at any given time.
The exceptions were Aaron Duggan (husband of the director) who played Odysseus and only Odysseus, and Mary DiMasi, who, in her single role as Athena, was the narrator of the play and Odysseus’s protector. Both gave convincing performances worthy of their star billing.
As for the rest of the busy, busy cast, compliments are due not only to them but to costume designer EstherSkandunas and her group of 12 costumers, 1 costume shop technician and 3 costume dressers who not only garbed the actors, but did so in time for the many scenes.
Odysseus, you’ll recall from Homer’s book (or perhaps from the 1997 television miniseries starring Armand Assante), had one adventure after another in the ten years it took him to get home. He encountered, among others, a cyclops, a witch, an enchantress, sirens, sea serpents, lotus eaters, kings, courtiers, gods, adverse weather conditions, serving maids, dead people (including his mother in the underworld), and finally the many suitors who, notwithstanding the protestations of his son Telemachus, wanted his wife Penelope to marry one of them in his absence.
Penelope, played by Yvette Angulo, had a wonderful moment at the end of the play when she realized that the man who had appeared (with Athena’s help) as a beggar at her door was in fact her long-lost husband; and Adam Weiner as the loud suitor Antinous was impressive with a voice more booming than that of Derek San Filippo, who played Zeus among other parts, all soft-spoken.
As lotus eaters, Yvette Angulo, Aimee Holland, Stephanie Johnson, and Alix Mendoza brought to mind the pot and LSD parties of the 1960s and 1970s, or at least those I remember hearing about. Joel Castellaw was memorable as Odysseus’s broken-hearted father Laertes; Jamie Trevino not only portrayed Helen, the beauty whose face launched 1,000 ships; she also got to play a sheep– as wide a divergence in roles as anyone ought to imagine.
Shane Monaghan was the loyal son Telemachus, while Sean Murray amused as the be-sneakered messenger god Hermes on a scooter. Fernando Jay Huerto was not only the sea god Poseidon, but also the king Menelaus. But he also played men of lesser aspect, portraying both a sailor and a suitor. Rounding out the cast in a variety of parts were Mark Steuer and Janine Walz.
In her program notes, director Duggan wrote “I am convinced that the reason this story has remained alive and well for over 2500 years is that the theme of journeying, and the changes that journeys inspire and demand, is the story of being human. We are all simultaneously outward bound and homeward bound, journeying toward new things just as we are pulled on unseen currents away from things that no longer fit us.”
This might be said as well about the journey made by the Hebrews in the Exodus, a journey that took 40 years out of slavery into freedom, during which one generation died (including Moses) and another carried forth into the Promised Land. That story will be retold at dinner tables in Jewish homes around the world on Monday night, March 25, and in some homes, there will be an encore performance on Tuesday evening, March 26.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com