Peter Fernon and Charles Affleck are following up their well received production of “Gilgamesh”in the recent Castlemaine Fringe Festival with another great epic hero, “Odysseus”. Odysseus will be showing at Trades Hall, 127 Mostyn St, Castlemaine at 8pm on Saturday 27 April.

Homers second great epic is set after the war in Troy and focuses on one of it’s heros, Odysseus. Odysseus is tired of war and wandering. He wishes to return to his wife and son in Ithaca but gods and nymphs conspire to delay him. At last he is given refuge by some people who might help him but he’s going to have to tell them a damn good story.

This telling of Homers “The Odyssey” reduces a twenty hour epic to an hour and 15 minutes. Although it does not include every scene and episode, it tries to be true to the story as a whole and presents “The Odyssey” as a coherent unity. The great god Zeus, who is something of a gangster, oversees the progress of Odysseus while the other main storyteller is Odysseus himself, with the goddess Athena putting in an occasional appearance. There is some homespun theology as well as contemplation of the nature of marriage and leadership and proposes that giving refuge lies at the very heart of what we mean by “civilization”.

To book ring 5424 1237