Festival Theatre
Four Stars
The heavens opened in
biblical fashion just before the Tuesday matinee of the second part of Stephen
Fry’s epic solo retelling of Greek legend. If this was a sign that the Gods
laid bare in the first part weren’t too happy with Fry bringing things back
down to Earth with its second and third, Fry held court regardless as the politest
of Oracles.
With a tad more dry ice
than its predecessor, Heroes is more of a boy’s own adventure, pitting
regional-accented macho men against all manner of scary monsters and super
creeps.
So, from a
long-suffering Hera having breakfast with Zeus in Olympus, we meet an Alan
Bennett styled Perseus, who on his wanderings gets all tied up with a Welsh Andromeda,
while a nice but dim Heracles is just one more result of Zeus’ promiscuous
proclivities, which here sound more like something out of a 1970s very British
sex comedy.
With Theseus thrown into
Hades and assorted gorgons and Minotaurs elaborately slain, Tim Carroll’s Shaw
Festival production sees Fry open out what is essentially an extended romp before
gently bringing home the importance of having someone to save you.
Fry could give the late Ken
Dodd a run for his money in his ability to hold an audience with a story. During
his Mythical Pursuits interludes, he acknowledges how Harry Potter, Game of
Thrones, the Marvel Comic Universe and the creators of every other labyrinthine
latter-day parallel universe took their moves from the Greeks.
In the final part, Fry
moves to Troy, unravelling the story of a shipwrecked Odysseus in what is
probably the most familiar of the season for the layman and woman. At the end
of the entire trilogy’s almost eight-hour marathon, while Fry has studiously
body-swerved contemporary politics and kept things largely on a family friendly
keel, his plea for humanity is what stands out most in this most epic of adventures
in storytelling.
The Herald, August 21st 2019.
ends
Comments