Show has epic power of poetry
THEATRE
The Epic
Written and performed by Finn O’Branagain and Scott Sandwich
3.5 stars
Blue Room Theatre
REVIEW: DAVID ZAMPATTI
Anyone who saw Denis O’Hare’s magnificent An Iliad last year will never forget the power of his stories based on, but not shackled to, Homer’s epic poem.
Performance poets Finn O’Branagain and Scott Sandwich take us back to the walls of Troy, and Homer, in the first stop of a pole-to-pole expedition in search of the world’s elemental epic stories, and an entertaining and illuminating journey it is.
O’Branagain and Sandwich are at pains to tell us that The Epic is not a play, and they are not actors (they’re being a little overmodest there, but we take their point), but there’s more than enough drama in the stories to compensate.
At Troy we meet the silver-tongued Odysseus, and Sandwich exposes his duplicity and self-creation; we go back in time to the First Man, older than Adam, Gilgamesh and his soul companion Enkidu, forward to the pre-Colombian vampire myth of the Seneca people, the vast, bizarre Kalevala of Finland and the creation myth of Japan, the Kojiki.
From Madagascar there’s the story of Ibonamasiboniamanoro, “he of the clear and captivating glance”, and the power and meaning of names; in Ireland we travel with Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the myths of the Fianna.
In these stories, often for the first time, psychologically identifiable personalities emerged from the shade of pre-history. In recognising them, we better understand ourselves.
There are a couple of false steps along the way; a segue from Gilgamesh’s grief at the death of Enkidu to Vin Diesel mourning Paul Walker was too Fast & Furious for my liking, and they really struggle with a too-glib and not particularly insightful saga of the long wait for recognition by Australia’s original inhabitants.
They should delve back into the 60 millennia of the epic stories of indigenous culture for far better material.
What O’Branagain and Sandwich do very, very well throughout, though, is keep things clear and accessible without condescension; I suspect they are operating on the edge of most of their audience’s cultural literacy – they certainly were in my case – and that’s exactly where they need to pitch.
I knew there’s such a thing as the Kalevala but this was the first time I’d heard its story; my knowledge of Irish mythology came pretty much from Yeats – I know more now. I guess I know more about Fast & Furious too.
We have been cut adrift from many of these legends but they still lurk in the foundations of humanity’s culture, in our literature and language. O’Branagain and Sandwich do them, and us, a service retelling them in this satisfying, approachable show.
