Jon Tracy's 'The Salt Plays, Part 2' review

Robert Hurwitt
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The San Francisco Chronicle

The gods are almost as messed up as they are mesmerizing in "Of the Earth: The Salt Plays: Part 2" at Shotgun Players' Ashby Stage. In the final chapter of Jon Tracy's two-play Homeric epic, Odysseus' long voyage home is as engrossing and suspenseful as the entire Trojan War was in the first.

Brendan West's inspired drums-and-vocals score infuses and drives the action. Lexie Papedo's impatient Penelope weaves white-cord boats and caves around Dan Bruno's driven Odysseus as five gorgeous goddesses labor to keep him from getting home. The drums, athletic choreography and Lloyd Vance's thickly layered videos anchor the action in the previous play as they propel it forward.

Like last summer's "In the Wound," this is a loose take on Homer's epic. Author-director Tracy sticks more closely to the events of "The Odyssey" than he did to "The Iliad," but "Earth" is a retelling of one of Western civilization's foundational myths through contemporary eyes.

Tina Yeaton's time-traveling costumes frame the tale. In his dark business suit, Bruno (who helped conceive the project) is Odysseus as everyman, albeit with an epic guilty conscience. Penelope's voluminous blue gown bespeaks traditional domestic comforts he can't recover, while the skintight outfits of the deities could be celestial space suits.

Even the reason Odysseus can't go home again is less straightforward than it appears. Rami Margron's soft-as-nails Zeus insists that he suffer until he pays for the death of Iphigenia (Nesbyth Rieman on film), a theme of the first play. His - or her - wife, Hera (Emily Rosenthal), calls those motives into question. To some degree, Odysseus' odyssey reflects the problems of war-traumatized veterans trying to reconnect with lives left behind.

Grumbling and rebelling under Zeus' commands and the power of his fearsome brother Poseidon (Anna Ishida), Athena and Aphrodite (Elena Wright and Charisse Loriaux, like Bruno, Papedo and Rosenthal repeating their roles from "Wound") help thwart Odysseus' journey. All five goddesses - yes, "father" Zeus and Poseidon are female (these are deities; get over it) - transform themselves into everything from the hero's crew to a brilliantly low-tech ensemble Cyclops and monster Scylla.

Meanwhile, Penelope's strong will keeps weaving ways home for her husband, and their son, Telemachus (Daniel Petzold), tries to reach him through everything from paper airplanes to TV shows. Her strongest challenge comes from the sorceress Circe (Loriaux), expressed in a dynamic vocalized clash and in Loriaux's seductive dancerly suspension over Odysseus in predatory eroticism.

Goddesses hang from the steel poles of Nina Ball's striking, spare set. Drumsticks become swords in dynamic battle scenes. Lucas Krech's lights turn shadows into added actors. As in "Wound," the action becomes so thickly layered that you may want to see the play more than once. That's also true of the story Tracy so vividly tells.