Festival
Theatre
Four
stars
As Olympian
feats go, Stephen Fry’s attempt to translate his published retellings of Greek
myths into a trilogy of solo performances is an epic of story-telling whichever
way you look at it. With just a suitably ornate armchair on a stage framed by a
backdrop of a starry night sky, this first part sees Fry work his
well-travelled avuncular charm before settling in Jackanory-style to regale an
audience hanging on his every erudite word.
This
sees him move gleefully from Kronos hacking off the genitals of his father
Uranus to an expansive comic-strip style soap opera that sees Fry relate assorted
grand gestured yarns while also noting historians’ apparent mistranslations of
the type of accessory carried by Pandora. He also manages to shoe-horn in
references to The Importance of Being Earnest, Morrissey and even The Smurfs by
way of a series of silly voices absorbed from several generations of
classically savvy humourists.
Accompanied
in Tim Carroll’s production by a dazzling array of projections by Nick
Bottomley, Fry breaks things up with a showbiz style quiz of sorts. Here, the
audience get to play a Trivial Pursuits-like game that allows their host to go
off on one tangent or another in a way that fuses the personal with the
educational.
First
seen at the Shaw Festival in Ontario, Canada, overall this makes for a charmingly
user-friendly trip, in which Fry proves himself to be a captivating,
charismatic and eminently knowledgeable presence. What he also does without
ever labouring the point is to show off the roots of democracy and civilisation
as we still just about know it. As the Gods of this first part look set to give
way to the Heroes and Men of the next two, Fry fans, historians and lovers of
tall tales writ even larger should stay tuned for the next exciting episode.
The Herald, August 20th 2019
ends
Comments