Skip to main content

Mythos: A Trilogy - Heroes / Men

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   






Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Andrew Midgley obituary

Born October 26th 1965 Died October 28th 2010 Andrew Midgley, who has died of a heart attack during a session in a Musselburgh gym aged forty-five, didn’t look like a pop star. Neither did this most garrulously playful of raconteurs particularly enjoy talking about his brief time in the charts during the early 1990s. Yet, while there was far more to this most singular of autodidacts, as one half of club-dance duo Cola Boy, Midgley caught the pop-rave zeitgeist with appearances on Top of the Pops performing the band’s infectiously catchy top ten hit, Seven Ways To Love. Even here, however, just as he would later apply diligence and care behind the scenes as a sub-editor on the Edinburgh Evening News, creating two of the funniest websites on the planet or managing an award-winning comedian, the man nicknamed ‘Boy Naughty’ preferred to stay in the background, allowing former Wham! backing singer turned Radio Two DJ Janey Lee Grace to bask in the day-glo spotlight of the period. Mid...
Post a Comment
Read more