May 18 Sat | 7:30pm
Studio
PENELOPE
by Enda Walsh
A staged reading | directed by Chang Nai Wen | with Shaun Lawton, John Keogh, Jon Smith and Tomas Spencer
Odysseus took off twenty years ago to fight in the Trojan wars and left his wife Penelope behind. She’s had her hands (and house) full of suitors ever since. Two hours before the master of the house finally returns, the four remaining suitors decide that their only chance of survival is to work together – and persuade Penelope that her future will be better without her husband. Much like Tom Stoppard’s famous Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, this play offers a new perspective on a famous tale by telling it from the point of view of “minor” characters. Rather than a story of epic heroes and gods, Walsh confronts us with the realities and limits of humanity.
Enda Walsh is a playwright and screenwriter who shot to fame when he won both the George Devine Award and the Stewart Parker Award in 1997 with his play Disco Pigs. In 2007 and 2008 Enda won Fringe First Awards at two consecutive Edinburgh Festivals for his plays The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom. The former led the Guardian to name him “one of the most dazzling wordsmiths of contemporary theatre.” Since his initial success as a playwright, Enda has gone on to write for the screen. His 2008 biopic, Hunger, told the story of the final days of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands and won a host of awards, including the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Heartbeat Award at the Dinard International Film Festival.