Penelope waits for the return of her husband who, you will remember, has been on a business trip to Troy for the last 10 years. During his absence she has had over 100 suitors; but she has remained famously faithful. Enda Walsh’s one-act play opens when there are only four men left. The rest have been massacred. Can any of them win her love before Odysseus returns and kills them too? The action takes place in a drained swimming pool and features a deluxe barbecue. The actors wear bath robes and bathing trunks.
Penelope sits on high silently watching them on CCTV as they, one by one, address her in long and exhausting speeches. Things liven up towards the end with a bit of magic when Karl Shiels, who gives a revealing performance, does a series of amazingly quick costumes changes from Napoleon to Josephine to Romeo to Juliet to Rhett Butler to Scarlet O’Hara to JFK to Jackie Kennedy. But for most of the time Walsh is pretty heavy-going. Indeed if Homer had had to sit through this verbiage he would probably have nodded off.