Writer: Lisa Langseth
Translator: Rochelle Wright
Director: Emily Louizou
So ripe is the Apollo and Daphne myth for today’s world of toxic masculinity that two shows have opened this week in London that bring the story into the present. Sap, currently at Soho Theatre, explores the myth through the lens of bisexuality while Lisa Langseth’s The Woman Who Turned Into A Tree, at the Omnibus Theatre, upends the myth to turn it into a story of female empowerment.
In the original story, Apollo doggedly pursues Daphne and just as he is on the verge of catching her, she begs her father for help. Her father turns her into a laurel tree. Apollo is heartbroken and makes a crown out of the tree’s leaves, but his stripping the laurel leaves from the tree could easily be seen as yet one more violation of her body. Women cannot escape; they are trapped whatever they do.
Langseth’s Daphne is also trapped but now in a society where women are expected to behave and dress in certain ways. She is obsessed with scrolling through social media, looking at the newest outfits worn by the newest celebrities. She envies them. She wants to be the Woman with Class that she sees so often on Instagram. When she’s working at the swish nightclub in the evening wearing Tom Ford dresses, she imagines how she looks in the eyes of others. She pouts and she gestures trying to replicate the elegance she sees online.
Bathsheba Piepe and Ioli Filippakopoulou play the two sides of Daphne. At first, they look the same, wearing sparkly dresses and blond mermaid-like wigs. They pose and smile in unnatural manners and they look more like dolls or automatons than real women during these early minutes. But as the play progresses, their characters diverge. Piepe, who does most of the talking, tries to maintain the façade, believing that some men who come into the club could see her as the Woman with Class. On the other hand, Filippakopoulou is the first to discard her wig, and when Peipe forces a smile, Filippakopoulou only looks sad.
When Daphne returns to her bedsit, the only one she can afford (although she has money enough to buy Kenzo dresses at the drop of a hat) she finds herself talking to the tree that stands outside her window. Could it be that the branches are edging closer?
This is no simple rewrite of the Daphne myth, and the men in Langseth’s version are not as determined as Apollo. This means that one can never be sure where the story is headed, right up to its closing scenes. The vision of director Emily Louizou ensures that the play is strange and unsettling, especially the interaction between the two Daphnes. The dancing segments at the club are eerily choreographed by Filippakopoulou, and Ioano Curelea’s set, with slogans like Imposter Syndrome chalked all over the black surfaces, positions the story far from the swanky nightclub where most of the action takes place. Amy Hill’s moody lights are not those of a discotheque.
Theatre Company Collide’s weird aesthetic sometimes distracts from the story of a woman trying to find her way in a world where appearances only need to be skin deep, but the strangeness is intriguing and enticing nevertheless.
Runs until 22 April 2023
