York Theatre RoyalAtwood’s adaptation of her own novella is revived with Amelia Bullmore as a wry Penelope but it’s the eight-strong chorus who pull the story’s threadsAfter a summer of Odysseus hogging the spotlight thanks to Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster take on Homer, it’s time for the women to have their say. The Penelopiad is, as its title declares, the story of Odysseus’s famously faithful wife. But in Margaret Atwood’s play, adapted for the stage from her own novella, it is also Penelope’s brutally slain maids whose perspective is reclaimed. If Penelope’s voice has been sidelined, theirs have been silenced altogether.The backdrop for this revisionist storytelling is hades. In Sara Perks’s minimal design, it’s a sterile, featureless place, deliberately drained of the passion and mess of life. Thick, blood-red ropes suggest the strands – literal and narrative – woven by Penelope and the cords used to hang the maids. These wronged figures form a chorus, acting out episodes from Penelope’s life as well as interrupting with their own bitter take on events. We hear of Penelope and Odysseus’s marriage, his departure to Troy, and the long, long years that followed. Continue reading...