AGa+Odyssey

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Odyssey by Andreas Litras, March 15, 2012

 * Odyssey by Andreas Litras **
 * Identity Theatre **
 * The Open Stage, Parkville, March 15 to 31, 2012 Reviewer: Kate Herbert **
 * [[image:http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FS2m6GLYx5E/T2JpCupeu8I/AAAAAAAAAI4/ZSduen5ApDE/s1600/Odyssey_boat_2_300.jpg align="center"]] ||

**IN HIS SOLO SHOW, ODYSSEY, ANDREAS LITRAS**** uses Homer’s Ancient Greek, epic poem about the fraught voyages of Odysseus to illuminate his own family’s journey from Greece to Australia. ** The play, directed skilfully by John Bolton, began its own journey in the 1990s and now returns for those who missed it before it went on its international travels. Litras creates an intimate relationship with us, addressing the audience directly as both himself and an older, Greek bloke who prepares the stage for the performance. In the style of ‘Poor Theatre’, the stage is sparsely decorated with three hinged frames that establish locations in Greece and Australia, aboard ship, a chip shop, the walls of Troy, Cyclops’ cave and Circe’s island. Using both tragedy and comedy, Litras peoples the stage with a parade of characters from his family and from the ancient the legendary hero’s 20-year voyage. As the older character, Litras relates the tale of Odysseus and it is here that his polished clown skills are employed to depict the Battle of Troy and the Trojan Horse, Odysseus’s confrontation with Cyclops, Circe and the Sirens. His inventive depiction of Odysseus in the Underworld is performed behind the lid of a suitcase where, in rapidly applied white-face, he changes character with a wig, a crown or a moustache. As himself, he narrates his parents’ migration to Australia, finding comedy in his father’s cheeky behaviour, his mother’s arrival as a proxy bride and the extended family’s obsession with fish and chips shops. Litras tempers the comedy with darker, poignant moments such as his father’s death, his mother praying to saintly icons, images of his father gambling and smoking or being called a wog. Weaving the legend with autobiography, memory with imagination, comedy with tragedy, Litras creates a moving piece of theatre and history in this little gem. By Kate Herbert

= Odyssey = ===== Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead ===== March 21, 2012

Andreas Litras in //Odyssey//. //Photo: Simon Cuthbert//   **Andreas Litras and John Bolton**
 * || [[image:http://images.smh.com.au/2012/03/20/3149748/deb_7_odyssey_20120320223502961377-420x0.jpg]] ||

**Identity Theatre, The Open Stage, Melbourne University, until March 31** HOME. It's a powerful and ephemeral idea, one that provokes as much torment as solace, as much longing as belonging. Andreas Litras' one-man show flits between the epic homecoming of Homer's Odyssey and the contemporary migrant experience, telling the story of his parents' journey to Australia after the Greek civil war and their quest to make a home from lives lived between cultures.  It's clear that Litras' own home is the stage, and it's a joy to watch theatre that feels so fully inhabited. The show's Homeric strand is related in the persona of an ageing Greek-Australian stagehand. The story might be Greek, but the mock-heroic clowning that brings it to life is very much Australian, and Litras has a rare gift for working an audience. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">His two-minute rendition of the Iliad is hilarious, but the comedy burgeons into something less ridiculous and more visually arresting as Odysseus reaches the land of the dead. Interspersed throughout are biographical episodes, where Litras embodies his parents and offers a tranquil narration on their lives. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Here, the physical theatre reaches effortlessly into more difficult emotional territory, with heightened caricature directed to shadowy glimpses of his father's gambling problem, the drudgery of running a fish and chip shop, the sting of being called a wog, the overwhelming moment of reunion with family after many decades, and the incense and icons of a funeral come too soon. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">John Bolton's direction keeps many balls in the air and Litras creates entertaining and ultimately poignant theatre.

=<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 26px;">Odyssey = <span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">“beautifully comic, emotive and searingly real” - <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Time Out, London

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">After winning hearts around the world Andreas Litras’ remarkable one-man show Odyssey finally comes back to where the story all began. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Odyssey weaves the stories of Andreas’ family and their migration from Greece to a fish and chip shop in Ballarat through the legend of Odysseus, hero of the Trojan War. The performance turns the mythical world of Homer’s epic upside-down with a tale of quiet domestic heroism, of hard work, fitting-in and making-do. The line between epic drama, Greek tragedy, comedy and the everyday disappears in this beautifully crafted autobiographical work. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">While Andreas shares stories of his family and fish’n’chips, it is Karagiozi, the wise-cracking stage manager, who has the audience in hysterics with his own personal rendition of Homer’s Odyssey. Journeys and characters cross paths as the performance moves between Andreas and Karagiozi, past and present, Greece and Australia, memory and imagination. Stunning in its irreverence, passion and joy; Odyssey celebrates what it means to find home. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Internationally acclaimed, Odyssey has captured audiences from the U.S. to London and ‘is a journey no one will want to miss’, Mail-Star, Canada

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Odyssey by Andreas Litras and John Bolton <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">March 13-31 Open Stage, 757 Swanston St Carlton (cnr Swanston and Grattan St’s)

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">1pm -Tues, Thurs & Fri

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">7.30pm -Wed-Sat

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">5pm – Sundays <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Bookings: <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #0143a7; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">www.trybooking.com/BBLV

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Information: 1300 099 660 <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Odyssey reviews: <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">“It was a virtuoso performance and Litras spun the three narratives together to make gold.”

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">NZ Listener <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">“a rare diamond, cut with taste and precision”

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Canberra Times <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">“Odyssey is a universal story, told with love and humour, and a delight to watch.”

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The Australian


 * Odyssey ||  ||   ||
 * Odyssey performances - Wed-Sat 7.30pm, Sundays 5pm from 15-31 March
 * Odyssey performances - Wed-Sat 7.30pm, Sundays 5pm from 15-31 March

"comic, emotive and searingly real.” Time Out, London

“… an exuberant and courageous performance…” Metro (London)

”… tender moving moments to wildly funny… brilliant acting... “ The Malay Mail

Andreas Litras’ internationally acclaimed production finds its way home to Ballarat and Melbourne

Odyssey, a remarkable one-man show, in which Andreas Litras parallels his family history with that of Homer’s Ancient Greek hero Odysseus, returns to where it began – Melbourne and Litras’ hometown of Ballarat – following a decade of standing ovations and critical accolades around the world.

Stunning in its irreverence, passion and intense joy, Andreas Litras’ Odyssey, directed by Green Room awardwinner John Bolton, celebrates what it means to find home and an understanding of where one belongs. His universally relevant tale touches the hearts of audiences wherever it travels, although Litras initially focused on the Australian migrant experience.

“The more I thought about this classic story told many thousands of years ago, I started to think of my parents’

odyssey and that of all the other migrants who arrived in Australia post-WWII,” explains Litras. “I felt those stories were epic and were not being celebrated as Australian stories.”

Litras presents three narrative threads; that of his own, the legendary one of Odysseus, and then his parents – the story of a single man seeking his fortune and the proxy bride who travels half-way around the world to marry someone she has never met. In a tour-de-force performance, Litras plays every character – male and female – including -the wise-cracking stage manager, Karagiosi, who has the audience in hysterics with his own personal rendition of Odysseus.

Litras turns the mythical world of Homer upside-down with quiet domestic heroism, hard work, fitting in and making do. The line between Greek tragedy and comedy, past and present, Greece and Australia, memory and imagination, and the everyday disappears in what is a beautifully crafted autobiographical work.

Following its phenomenal success at the 1998 Melbourne International Festival of the Arts in 1998,

Odyssey toured across Victoria to the Adelaide Festival before receiving an invitation to play at the prestigious BITE (Barbican International Theatre Experience) Festival, London, in 2001. Odyssey went on to enjoy successful seasons in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand – including Christchurch Festival, Spirit of Bethlehem Festival Pennsylvania USA, and Canada, receiving critical acclaim and public acclaim. In bringing the show back to Melbourne’s Antipodes Festival, and Ballarat, Litras has finally surrendered to the many requests for a return season more than a decade after its premiere performance. He reunites with director John Bolton who has shaped and refined the show in accordance with its evolution.

“The show has changed over the years, mainly because I have changed,” explains Litras, although the winning formula of love, humour and home stays firmly entrenched in this superb show. As reviewed in the Mail Star, Canada, "Odyssey is “a journey no-one will want to miss”.

Odyssey appeals to all, but is perfect opportunity to present within the Antipodes Festival, Melbourne's yearlong cultural program of art, literary, theatre, music and film events. ||