Ulysses (Sean Boyce Johnson) and his wife, Nella Pea (D. Woods), are finally reunited in Marcus Gardley’s Black Odyssey.
In Black Odyssey playwright Marcus Gardley has undertaken an ambitious conflation of Homer’s epic poem with the history of Black people in America. In this lively, overstuffed, and often bewildering fantasia, Ulysses Lincoln (Sean Boyce Johnson) struggles to find his way back to his family in Harlem after a discharge from the war in Afghanistan. He ends up homeless and then in a mental hospital, while his journey is overseen from Olympus by his allies Deus (i.e., Zeus, played by James T. Alfred) and Athena (Harriett D. Foy), and from the ocean by his enemy Paw Sidin (i.e., Poseidon), who is determined to kill him.
Harriett D. Foy as Athena is warned by Paw Sidin (Jimonn Cole) not to interfere in his revenge against Ulysses.
Gardley uses Homer’s story to layer on other elements. There are African-based music and references to Black culture, such as Basquiat’s crown and Alabama Slim. He adds a chess game, too, in which Paw Sidin and Deus play with life-size characters dressed as pieces. Each move results in a flashback for the hapless Ulysses.
At one point the hero is pulled onto an overturned boat during a flood on the Mississippi, providing echoes of Huckleberry Finn and the biblical Flood. But it’s 1968. On the boat, a young girl (Tẹmídayọ Amay) announces that “I’m Benevolence Nausicca Calypso Sabine,” drawing an audible sigh from those who remember Calypso from school. (Nausicäa was there too, but less memorable.) Benevolence’s mother, Alsendra, explains to Ulysses that
God’s been crying forty days and nights since he lost his children. He’s been wailing, spitting curses on the Earth since they shot his sons: Medgar, Malcolm, and JFK, but King was the last straw. … That’s why we stranded. It’s the end of days, sir.
Adrift on the Mississippi, Alsendra (Adrienne C. Moore) and her husband, Artez (Lance Coadie Williams), notice historical figures from Black history on other boats.
During the long scene, Alsendra points to other boats’ inhabitants: the Scottsboro Boys are on one; Emmett Till is on another.
At home, meanwhile, a more human and intimate crisis unfolds. Ulysses’ wife, Nella Pea, has given birth to their son, Malachi. The birth is handled inventively by director Stevie Walker-Webb, as a Greek chorus pulls out long blue fabric from between Nella’s legs and an Afro-Cuban hymn is sung. The chorus scrunches up the fabric to form a swaddled baby, and then suddenly it becomes the sullen 16-year-old (a touchy, device-addicted Marcus Gladney Jr., who records himself heading to an upscale school on his first day, fulfilling his elders’ urban Black aspirations).
Nella is being courted by Jimonn Cole’s determined Suitor (really Paw Sidin in disguise, hoping to cuckold Ulysses), but Paw is thwarted by Foy’s Athena, who has surrendered her immortality to be with Nella, arriving with comic bluster as Aunt Tina (another of many puns on Homer’s names).
At times, though, Gardley departs from Homer in key ways. Paw Sidin wants revenge on Ulysses for killing his son, Poly’famous (Gladney again). But rather than the murderous one-eyed Cyclops from The Odyssey, Poly’famous is an Afghan boy imploring a war-stressed Ulysses not to shoot him. Ulysses’ guilt over killing the boy causes his PTSD and his reluctance to seek out his family on his return.
Many of the most effective scenes are comic: In addition to Foy’s Athena, there’s robust hilarity in the appearance of the dancing sirens (vividly dressed by Kindall Houston Almond) and in Super Fly Tireseas (Alfred again), a Sixties hipster in a giant Afro who can’t understand the speech of Ulysses until he responds with period slang:
Can you … pay me a solid and cruise Marco Polo ’cross this pool, man. So, I can dig up my roots, which have been uprooted and booted by history into a trashcan by the man.
Malachi (Marcus Gladney Jr.) listens to the advice of his Aunt Tina (Foy). Photographs by Julieta Cervantes.
Yet, confusing as much of it may be to those who recollect only traces of The Odyssey, the show is performed with gusto by a superb cast. Cole plays the thunderingly resonant, unyielding Paw Sidin as if it were an audition (and an impressive one) for Coriolanus. Foy as Athena seems too old to be Zeus’s daughter, but once she becomes Aunt Tee she moves from bossy to weary as her mortality dwindles.
Johnson, however, has a more thankless role: Ulysses lacks agency and often just stands looking stunned. In The Odyssey one sees him outsmarting Polyphemus and Circe; here he narrates episodes in which the most colorful characters swirl around him.
Whether and how much Gardley’s mash-up of foundational Western literature and Black history will resonate with a viewer is uncertain, and there’s a whiff of “Isn’t this clever?” in all the name-checks, which sometimes feel relentless. But this visually lively Odyssey certainly has rewards for audiences willing to take the journey.
Marcus Gardley’s Black Odyssey runs through March 26 at Classic Stage Company (136 E. 13th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday (except March 17); matinees are at 1 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. For tickets and information, visit classicstage.org.
