Devised by Adelaide Waldrop, Brendan Macdonald and Eva Scott, with Penelope Kellogg Winkler
Adelaide Waldrop’s mother is a trooper. At home in the US, she picks up the phone when her daughter calls from the stage and says a cheery hi to the audience. That connection made, Waldrop asks her mother’s permission to ‘tell her story’. It is granted, on condition ‘that you don’t embarrass your father’.
This is a devised piece, and it shows. It gets pulled in too many different directions, and never quite achieves its stated aim, which seems to be an exploration of the way family history is told. In fact, not much of Penny’s life is revealed. Intriguingly, she gets her name from her parents’ frugal practice of putting a penny in a jar every time they have sex. Otherwise, she is a baby boomer, who, although badly affected by her father’s departure, avoids an eating disorder, grows up and gets married. Names are tantalisingly dropped, and various boyfriends are mentioned, but we learn little about them and their effect on her life.
Instead, Waldrop and her sidekick, the admirably versatile Brendan Macdonald, involve Penelope from the Odyssey, a decision based tenuously on the connection between the names. Enter Eva Scott, a magnificent diva in a gold lamé jacket with a grand voice – she is after all, “classically trained”. This Penelope is much keener to talk about herself than someone else’s mother.
There is not really much exploration of story -telling. The audience may come away feeling that good old recorded oral history is the best. If one point being made is that Penelope is “trapped” in her own story, it must be remembered that she is only a mythical figure. She is no more real than Patient Griselda. Are they saying that the roles women play in traditional tales entrap them? This is not a new idea.
This production is not without charm and the actors, three quarters of the Maude company, are talented. Waldrop is genuinely touching when she huddles up, re-enacting her mother’s loneliness and feelings of rejection, while Scott and Macdonald lip-synch to clips from Hollywood movies. It is painfully funny when they dance gleefully to a song with a pounding chorus of “You’re too fat”. There is a spectacular final scene when the stage becomes a ship with colourful sails and the cast reappear in sequins. However, the whole show feels as if disparate ideas have been laid out but not really fitted together.
Runs until 28 August 2021
The Reviews Hub Score
Patchy patchwork
