This Temple Theatre (UK) production of Unmythable does to Greek mythology what The Reduced Shakespeare Company has done to Shakespeare and to The Bible.

Apart from the great literature, they have in common a shoe-string budget. In Unmythable‘s case the budget runs to three wooden crates and a few costumes, including enormous rainbow coloured bow ties.   

Three comic actors have been let loose on Greek mythology and they take us on a whirlwind tiki tour snapping the most famous tourist sites through a cracked lens. The result is often hilarious, always hugely enjoyable. [More]

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Staging the Greek myths, and numerous ones in just over an hour, is an admirable undertaking and Unmythable bullets through the material in lightening speed. Three actors perform all the roles, with rapid changes, and on a bare stage but for three crates and a few props and costume items.

We begin with Jason aboard his ship, with his two men, Beta and Gamma, on his quest to find the golden fleece. The actor playing Jason later becomes Delta, and much is made of there being no Alpha among them. The audience is cast as the Argonauts – and Wellington’s opening night crowd cheers every time they are mentioned.

The three actors* must be commended for their impressive energy, movement, singing and ability to play numerous roles, sometimes all in one scene. One of the strongest sequences is the re-telling of the myth of Demeter and Persephone, which is performed by two actors – one playing the mother and daughter and the other playing Zeus and Hades – and reaches its climax with a confrontation between all four characters at once.

When an audience knows stories as well as we know the Greek myths, we go to the theatre in the hope that we will be presented with something new.  Unfortunately, in this way, Unmythable doesn’t come through. The main goal seems to be to make sure the audience knows the stories, rather than be playful or innovative with it, and at times this means too much ‘telling’ and not enough ‘showing’.

For me, the greatest moment is when one character cheers about the glory and excitement of the Trojan horse and there is a quick jump to the next scene in which the characters crouch completely still – showing the event to be what it more likely was: a long silent wait in the dark. This stillness is a new take on a tale that is often represented with much action – and the actors hold the audience in the palms of their hands through a pause that must last several minutes. However, the tension is broken and the subtlety undermined when one character explains exactly what is going on to another – an explanation I suspect most of the audience could do without.

At its best, poor theatre embraces its scarcity of resources by finding inventive ways to use the few items at the actors’ disposal but in Unmythable, while characterisations are reasonably strong, opportunities are missed for creative representations. There is a great moment when Helios, the Sungod, is depicted with golden rays emerging out of his pockets, but other symbolism falls into cliché – for example, Hades being denoted with a splash of red light.

Another issue that I find somewhat frustrating is the way women are represented. Of course the ancient myths provide more interesting roles for men, but in this modern production, the female characters are repeatedly undermined and reduced to nothing more than sex objects – particularly in a sleazy musical number, with lyrics including “laying down with Leda, getting hot with Hera” and a line that glorifies sexual abuse by presenting it as comedy.

That said, Unmythable is largely an entertaining evening out but doesn’t offer many new insights to those who are already familiar with the stories.  It would be ideally suited to a high school audience and those who are just beginning to learn about the Greek myths.

*[Yet again there were no programmes available which is frustrating for critics and audiences alike, and it feels like an insult to the artists not to be able to name them. This is an issue the NZ Festival needs to address. – ed]

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