Homer’s epic ‘The Odyssey’ plods through the Civil War
Suzan-Lori Parks’ latest work misses the mark at ACT
Suzan-Lori Parks is known for excavating the minefield of race and gender. American history is exposed as a dark carnival in her deep and mysterious body of work, which includes the explosive Pulitzer winning “Topdog/Underdog” and the haunting “In the Blood.”
Now in the disappointing “Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3),” in its regional premiere at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, the ambitious playwright tries to steep the bones of “The Odyssey,” “The Oresteia” and “The Mahabharata” into the blood of the Civil War. But this ponderous three-hour history play, shot through by long plodding passages, never sweeps us along in its journey and its characters never compel us to probe the lasting wounds of slavery. The co-production with Yale Repertory Theatre runs through May 20 at the Geary Theater.
Liz Diamond’s lackluster direction also squanders the musicality of the language and saddles the production with little sense of propulsion.
Framed by a blues lamentation (performed by Martin Luther McCoy), the saga spins around Hero (James Udom), a slave followed by a dog named “Odd-See.” Hero can’t decide whether to fight for the Confederacy
— a deplorable option, but one which may earn him his freedom — or take the more morally suitable choice and risk the wrath of the Master (Dan Hiatt).
The Old Man (a masterful Steven Anthony Jones) urges him to risk it while his lover Penny (Eboni Flowers) begs him to stay.
The choice chokes him as does the guilt he feels for helping the master chase down a runaway slave named Homer (a deft Julian Elijah Martinez). But still he undertakes the
quest.
Unfortunately the narrative loses its tether as Hero enters the battlefield, a charnel house of cannons and corpses. He encounters a fascinating figure in Smith (an astute Tom Pecinka), a Union soldier imprisoned in a cage. The man holds secrets that might shift Hero’s fate.
But instead a strange inertia seems to take hold of the landscape, as if suddenly this were a Beckettian void with no escape. The second act drags on interminably but there are still no clues if Homer has been transformed by war. Will he find his freedom? Can he ever hope to discover an identity of his own?
Oddly, when Hero comes home to the plantation, he is indeed a different man, angry and vengeful, but the change seems to occur offstage. The final act, in which Hero, now calling
himself Ulysses, returns to find Penny enmeshed with Homer also holds few revelations.
Parks intends to build out these stories into a nine-play cycle but it’s hard to imagine having the stamina for it. There are harrowing moments of insight and poetry here but they are buried amid the endless exposition.
It doesn’t help that Flowers struggles with Penny’s grief. Udom can’t inhabit Hero’s torment. Even the news of emancipation feels anticlimactic.
Only the dog (a saucy Gregory Wallace), who is half Greek chorus, half comic relief, injects some vigor into the narrative. He digresses in his stories, desperate to please everyone, while squandering the patience of the listener.
As the shaggy dog rambles on and the characters grow ever more annoyed, we know just how they feel.