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Review: 'Penelope' and her final four

Enda Walsh's Penelope is really only peripherally about that long-suffering classical icon of marital devotion. In Inis Nua Theatre Company's production, she wanders in and out of a sliding-glass door far above her final four suitors, never saying a word.

Inis Nua's production of the Enda Walsh play "Penelope.
Burns (Griffin Stanton-Ameisen) acts as the pool's servant and caters to needs of Dunne (John Morrison). (Credit: Katie Reing)
Inis Nua's production of the Enda Walsh play "Penelope. Burns (Griffin Stanton-Ameisen) acts as the pool's servant and caters to needs of Dunne (John Morrison). (Credit: Katie Reing)Read more

Enda Walsh's Penelope is really only peripherally about that long-suffering classical icon of marital devotion. In Inis Nua Theatre Company's production, she wanders in and out of a sliding-glass door far above her final four suitors, never saying a word. They're stuck at the bottom of an empty swimming pool with a defunct barbecue grill, makeshift wet bar, and only themselves for company. One by one, between brawls, they pitch their woo to the lady upstairs through closed-circuit television camera.

Twenty years of inventing new ways to defer more than 100 suitors, fend off in-house betrayals, and retain the blind faith that conquering Odysseus will return might wear a gal down. But it's these Irishmen who truly ache and yearn and waste years waiting for the smallest indication of favor from a cold, distant apparition, alternately idealized and despised. As it was with their mothers in childhood, so it remains through all the seasons of man, each represented here. Of course, Penelope (Adair Arciero) isn't really their Godot; Odysseus is. Make no mistake, this is a man's, man's, man's world.

Biding their time are Burns (Griffin Stanton-Ameisen), bullied and abused; alpha jerk Quinn (Jared Michael Delaney); bitter, aging Dunne (John Morrison); and the eldest, defeated, gentle Fitz (Leonard Haas), who sits reading Homer in hardback. Clad in bathing suits, their bodies have mostly gone to seed, though Quinn - in a thick black wig, with a biker's Fu Manchu mustache - struts the stage wearing a red Speedo as if he were still in his prime.

Director Tom Reing wants the men fooling themselves only a little. They're still funny, with Walsh tossing them winking Beckettian asides to mark their temporal slide, such as, "Seems like only yesterday it was yesterday," but as their inevitable reckoning draws near, they've mostly lost the sport in their waiting. Meghan Jones' set punctuates their decline, the pool grimy and blood-spattered, Penelope's abode more motel than palace.

Other writers have flipped a major work's focus to its minor characters, and it usually sheds more light on the work as a whole and the reasons for our continued fascination with it. Walsh, however, picked a lesser prism through which to view the greater tale.

His suitors' entreaties drag on long past their purpose. Quinn's romantic pantomime, a flurry of costumes representing love stories throughout the ages - feels rushed and out of character. And ultimately, their tale is too linear to be properly absurd. Still, these actors make the most of Walsh's existential angst, and even if Penelope's pool were drained, what's left inside still warrants a look.

THEATER REVIEW

Penelope

Presented by Inis Nua Theatre Company at the Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., through April 26.

Tickets: $25-$30.

Information: 215-454-9776 or www.inisnuatheatre.orgEndText