The Odyssey (A.R.T 2025) - An Essay about Gender in The Odyssey Masquerading as a Review

Recently, I had a pleasure of attending the production of Kate Hamill’s The Odyssey (“Hamill’s Odyssey) at the American Repertory Theater in Harvard Square. I thoroughly enjoyed the play, and I felt the need to yap about it. Bear with me, this was meant to be a review, but it is by no means an academic piece.

As a classicist (I received an MA in Classical Studies from Boston College in both Latin and Greek), I am often at odds with popular and contemporary renditions of classical literature. To me it is usually as a result of a lack of research sometimes lack care for the original source material , and often I’m left wanting because the original Source material was ultimately more vibrant, more interesting less flat than the modern rendition. the ancient world was a complex and multifaceted place. There were interesting and different understandings on our ancient counterparts’ case of gender, of society, of rules, of laws. While I don’t expect a modern audience to completely understand the nuance of the classical world, writer of a contemporary showing to encapsulate at least a little of the nuance, and vibrancy of the culture being depicted that production well I do have some issues or rather comments on certain somatic and plot direction. Something that out to me was that person who loved and respected the Odyssey created this piece of art. I also noted several literary influences, in particular I could just tell that writer Kate Hamill read and adored Madeline Miller’s Circe. While I absolutely hated that book, I think Hamill actually was able to weave together all the strongest parts of Miller’s telling, on particular a much less flattering depiction of Odysseus. Sadly, Miller’s Telemachus, my favorite, was a wildly different character. Spoilers ahead (although, can you spoil a 2,000-year-old story?)

Ultimately, Hamill’s Odyssey is a story of a man coming to terms with the women he’s wronged. Well at least that was a story I was watching. when I first was asked to join a friend in watching this play A couple of things caught my eye, but a Black Odysseus (played excellently by Wayne T. Carr)  simply couldn’t miss. Wow, I was excited. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this dramatic rendition of an epic, since I haven’t really been fed on such a piece of art since Troy (2004).

Additionally with Emily Wilson’s recent translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film project The Odyssey (2026), I was excited that the Odyssey seems to be having a moment. What I saw in actual production was more robust than I expected portrayal of suffering, the three things that were, the inherent feminism that the work was trying to exude Odysseus’s atheism or rather his coming to atheism and what was being said about the toll of war.

I want to discuss first that because ultimately, I think the intention behind the piece was to reflect an anti-war message. Odysseus suffering now for 11 years at the beginning of the play, just left Troy a year prior and is cozied up next to (I assumed) Calypso, who says “we had a deal!” As he abruptly abandons her bed in the night. Odysseus is clearly suffering because of his time at Troy. By the end of the work, we are brought to an understanding that war is bad (hot take). Odysseus had been the king of Ithaca with a wife and a baby when Agamemnon came knocking on his door, forcing his hand into honoring an earlier “deal” to fight side-by-side with Agamemnon. This is not a play for the uninitiated, as there are many key details left unsaid, such as why Agamemnon was seeking vengeance— Paris, a prince of Troy, stole a Greek woman, Helen, from her husband Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother. In fact, Agamemnon is the bogeyman of this play (Correctly, he is also the bogeyman of the Iliad!), as he nearly caused Odysseus to kill his own son to get Odysseus to fight in the war. In this way, Hamill’s Odyssey, and I’ll gamble that the OG Odyssey too, is reminiscent of contemporary media like All is Quiet on the Western Front (1930) or any post war film that shows that it was not worth it in the end. Unlike the Allies, however, the Greeks were the bad guys.

Hamill’s Odyssey does a good job depicting the losses the Greeks and Trojans suffer. This is seemingly because the singular evil of Agamemnon. The kidnapping of Helen is not put forth as the moral center of the work is it has Helen as more of a footnote in this work. Menelaus is never mentioned by name, and I only recall Paris just once. I don’t believe that she is trying to absolve the Greeks of their wrongdoing. Actually, Nausicaa arises as a moral core, very late into the narrative, which uses her as a vehicle to reveal that Odysseus. when is true evil act, although still perpetrated by Agamemnon, is revealed. Nausicaa is repulsed by Odysseus. But Odysseus, at this time, has lost all of his men, has toiled for nearly 20 years straight; his son is fully grown and suffering; Ithaca is in political turmoil. It is hard, here, to see the Greeks as anything but victims, But, really, they essentially used Helen’s kidnapping as an excuse to wage war against a rich nation to propel the Greeks as the new shiny “country,” a superpower if you will. (I like to think of Ancient Rome as America sans electricity, so the Greeks? Well, they’re complicated but they toggle in between being Great Britain and Germany, lol). It may have been helpful to see the triviality of the Greeks’ reasoning for going into war because it would have painted a fuller picture of the Greek aggressors. This is painted as a moral war: a man’s wife was taken by a rival, so they simply must fall for honor, dignity, kudos, kleos, etc. etc. Here we get the anti-war message that nothing is worth anything as big and devastating as this war, the war to end all wars. I don’t disagree, of course, but I think we have enough antiwar messaging this year with the new Captain America, a remake of All is Quiet on the Western Front (2022), and the recent rise in Nazism; this message is boring to say the least, as in it’s been done. It is inherent. It is what we know from the Odyssey and the 2000 years since.

Perhaps the issues lie with Agamemnon. Odysseus may be the main character of this rendition, but I’m not so sure. There are many parallels to Aeschylus’s Oresteia, a plot about a young man who was driven to avenge his father, Agamemnon. Orestes and Telemachus have much in common. They are boys when their fathers leave for Troy, they are men when their narrative is told, but they face a dilemma inherent in Greek culture of honoring and emulating their fathers, who were great heroes but terrible men. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, Helen’s sister, murder her husband upon his arrival home from Troy. This is in vengeance for him earlier murdering their daughter, Iphigenia as a sacrifice before the war. In turn, Orestes, their son murders Clytemnestra and her lover, then is haunted by the furies for his sin of mother murder. Here, you can see the workings of the blood of blood theme that Hamill’s Odyssey presents. A theme of women being sacrificed at the altar of unworthy men. Telemachus in the OG Odyssey is grappling with his own manhood in the absence of a male figure to teach him what that means in what is lovingly referred to as the Telemachy, is the first several books of the poem. Hamill’s Odyssey keeps a grappling with adulthood, but the flashes of the boy deal much less with the discovery of his masculinity, more with the anger with his mother and Amphinomus’s affair. The brimming tension in the final scene sees Telemachus begging his father to murder Amphinomus, Penelope’s life feeling deeply at risk, as well, until Odysseus decides not to do it. To me, this resolves the blood for blood plot for Odysseus, but creates no such resolution for Telemachus. Telemachus is also robbed of coming to his own concept of manhood, as Orestes is granted, by him toiling over a decision and reaping the consequences of his own actions.

Other messaging than the antiwar one was apparent, but not necessarily resolved in the narrative. There was a unique discussion on gender happening in this work, and there was also an interesting discussion on accountability and a loss of faith. Wronged a lot of people something that is perhaps less apparent in the original work is that he should not have done that even though his suffering in the original poem can be directly attributed to him violating Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, 2000 years later, still lives on the consciousness as one of the most interesting obstacles “Nobody” had to overcome with his wily and clever mind. What later audiences possibly missed was that Odysseus is an asshole and a boastful one at that.

 

Additionally, the production has a lot in common with works that are more modern in composition, particularly with Shakespeare. An early scene sees Odysseus desperately trying to wash his hands while three women representative of his conscience taught him with his guilt is reminiscence of the tragedy of Macbeth. The three women exist in the background of the entire play and we slowly learn who they represent which leads to one of the main discussions of gender happening in the play the first woman we meet is, of course Penelope, who is at home suffering, and hanging on by a thread, and keeping Ithaca from descending into a war because of the power vacuum holding off her suitors and raising her young annoying son. Penelope is the second main character of this work. She embodies the feminism being attempted at as she explains to a suitor. She falls in love with who convinces her to remove her modesty veil, who convinces her to choose him over the other. Penelope explains that disease was not a great husband despite her reference for him despite the stories she tells her son about the great deeds of her of his father. She was tired of being disrespected by him as he slept with whoever he wanted whenever she was tired being his second choice because he originally met her while being a suitor for her cousin Helen, and she’s a brief discussion with Amphinomus about her cousin Helen, who she describes as funny and sweet and naïve and romantic and in an unhappy marriage. She tells the suitor every man always asks about her beauty, but never about who she was. This is another of the please boring tropes that the women in the narrative are simply unseen unheard. Helen was a lot of things in the OG Odyssey and in the Iliad, but naïve and stupid she was not. Matter Helen is a great speaker. She’s intensely interested in honor and glory herself. In the Odyssey there are some indications that she actually did prefer her husband Menelaus to Paris. Homer leans more toward a seduction in the Iliad, but it’s a fan favorite question as to whether or not she left willingly because she loved Paris, or she left unwillingly. Despite this, a scene in the Iliad reveals quite the character: Hektor comes in from the battlefield; Helen apologizes to her brother-in-law; her husband sucks, ain’t shit, and she wishes she had died instead of coming here with him. (Iliad 6.342-359). Everybody likes Helen. Nobody likes Paris. (If you are, like I am, obsessed with Helen, I recommend reading Ruby Blondell 2010 article “‘Bitch That I Am’: Self-Blame and Self-Assertion in the Iliad.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 140, no. 1 (2010): 1–32. Or their later book: Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2015.)

Say what you want about this movie, but the casting did the damn thing.

Penelope‘s character in this production too was robust and three-dimensional, and this was a departure from her secretive self in the OG Odyssey although I did not necessarily like her characterization, she seems so exacerbated and so unhappy with her situation and so reactive to it happening rather than proactive. When my interpretation, at least, of her in the OG Odyssey was, while having to live a life in a misogynist society, she and her husband were equally yoked as she was equally as tricky, sage, and wily as he was probably sleeping around as well. Penelope as a mother in both Odysseys did leave much to be desired.

Then, there are the three women of the chorus. The first woman we learn is Circe (fan-favorite, calm down). She is depicted as a grungy anarchist witch, which is cool as heck. Her character is the crux of the atheism in the play as she convinces Odysseus for at least a little while to cast aside what he is obsessed with as his duties to his kingdom his duties to the gods, his duties to himself and forget and drink, and be merry! she scuffs at the gods, what have they ever done for you Odysseus? She is insanely funny and very well acted by Kate Hamill, bestowing life into her art as playwright and actor. I Thought it was interesting, however, that she introduced the atheism into the play because she is herself and then insanely powerful magical creature who is a descendent of the gods, and Odysseus got there after fighting a giant another descendent of the gods. By the time gets to the second woman, Nausicaa, who is a priestess of Helios Odysseus is completely an atheist saying that the gods are not real, and they did nothing for him at Troy. Nausicaa who in the OG Odyssey was a princess on a utopia island right near Ithaca that was beholden to the Poseidon, and, fun story – this island was destroyed immediately after because of their unknown service to Odysseus) is the same young and naïve woman, but is the most modern character. She encourages her lover Odysseus to discuss his trauma and love her openly and healed from that trauma. But the story he reveals is of raining horror upon the Trojans, cutting down or being the cause of cutting down men, women, children, and one misfortune riddled baby.

This baby is the reason for woman number 3, Andromache, wife of Hektor, mother of baby Astyanax ,whom we learn Agamemnon dropped off the walls of Priam’s fallen palace. What sticks out to me is that Odysseus still has excuses, he wanted the cycle to end, he wanted to horrors he faced as a Greek waging the wars to end, he wanted all the sons of Priam to die so they would not later rise up and wage more wars. Elsewhere, Penelope struggles to choose the suitor she has been involved with for years at this point for the same reason, there will be war! And when Nausicaa rebounds in disgust and sends Odysseus home, he arrives just in time to stop his wife from marrying another man.

This climax sees Odysseus in a huge departure from the source material. Now, he is just a stranger with no markings of his royalty or hero status that does not flinch so much at his wife’s pending marriage but at her great tapestry depicting him as a hero. Again, bloodshed, until instead of Athena stopping the parents of the dead suitors from rising up later, Odysseus stops himself from slaying Amphinomus.

The cycle, then, is broken. I guess. Penelope apologizes to her son “I should have let you weep” and then washes her husband’s hands of the blood. Except, huh????? All of a sudden, we care about Telemachus? Is this why we needed to make Odysseus an atheist, so he would have this moment? What about his guilt? What about his pride? What about the rampant issues being tackled about heroic masculinity? And does Odysseus ever realize that he needs to address any of this?

In that, while this dramatic ending resolves the issues it sets out to, it was not a satisfying ending to the play unfolding about gender and accountability. When Odysseus mentions Ajax, he mentions that he was driven mad when Odysseus won Achilles’ armor over him. Sophocles’ Ajax details the toll this took on Ajax, culminating in his suicide. Sophocles seems to have a better grasp on the failure of gendered expectations, there, revealing a deeply conflicted man who has been stripped of his honor, in essence what made him a man. If Achilles was the best of the Achaeans, Ajax was his second. But here Odysseus came, with his cleverness and his lies, Odysseus wins the dispute over the armor, he wins the whole war, not with brute strength, but with brainpower.

Even within the ten years of the war, we see the hero paradigm of Jason and Herakles falter. In the war to end all wars, a new type of hero was required. And then, when the war was over, Odysseus, too was made redundant. Now broken by battle, riddled with guilt, his son is grown without him. Instead, in this Play Amphinomus sits on the throne of Ithaca, having won it over with kindness, listening, and love. Telemachus, ever holding on to his father’s idol, is out of place in this new world.

 Nausicaa Odysseus that he in fact had not suffered enough for his actions at Troy. To me, it seems like “accountability” is the word she was looking for. It is not that he needed to be punished more, it was that he needed to realize his flaws and change. But then, what are Odysseus’s flaws? The play seems to think it’s his violence. But that’s not Odysseus’s paradigm. He knew he couldn’t compete with the likes of brawnier men like Agamemnon or Menelaus for Helen. What he brought to the table was lies. Lies upon lies. Innumerable manipulations to get what he wants. And when he comes home to his devoted wife and his worshipping son with plenty of punishment under his belt, there is not resolution for his lies. Circe’s son by him will soon come to his shore to put him down (in what comes next in the epic cycle, but is not a surviving work), his constant stepping out on his wife now at his doorstep, but this production ends before that could happen. Odysseus is home, now, to heal, the women that created his conscience silenced.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this play. It was very dramatic, obviously, and included some silly moments to cut through the tension. I especially enjoyed how the used shadow and puppeteering to bring the giant Polyphemus to life. He was a fun scene, constantly singing, and stroking his beloved “woolies”. The suitors at Ithaca traipsed around in fur coats. A dynamic stage used lights, sheets, shadows, and puppets to create an immersive experience with a minimalist approach. My biggest gripe with the play was some of the dialogue going back and forth between high epic speak to modern lingo and idioms.  I felt like I was watching a production of Aeschylus or Sophocles in how immersive and appropriately dramatic and interpretive the set and acting was. Lastly, I cannot understate how much fun having a Black Odysseus was.

The Odyssey, directed by Shana Cooper, written and adapted for theater by Kate Hamill, is playing at the American Repertory Theater from February 11-March 16.