New York critics have given mixed reviews to the Off-Broadway musical Penelope, or How the Odyssey Was Really Written, a retelling of Homer’s classic narrative poem. The creative team includes Peter Kellogg (book, lyrics), Stephen Weiner (music, arrangements), Emily Maltby (direction, choreography), David Hancock Turner (music direction, orchestrations, arrangements), Steve Delehanty (arrangements), James Morgan (sets), Lex Liang (costumes), David A. Sexton (lights), Bradlee Ward (sound), and Kate Field (props).
The cast includes Britney Nicole Simpson (Penelope) with Philippe Arroyo (Telemachus), Leah Hocking (Eurycleia), Cooper Howell (Antinous), Ben Jacoby (Odysseus), David LaMarr (Mileter), Jacob Alexander Simon (Bassanio), George Slotin (Haius), Sean Thompson (Barius), and Maria Wirries (Daphne). The production continues at the York Theatre Company through April 24.
DC Metro (Deb Miller): This version offers a new perspective … shifting the central focus of the epic myth from Odysseus’s journey to Penelope’s, in a work that is self-described as “funny, feminist, and fully relevant to today.” The witty script and score reference everything from the legendary figures … to Broadway’s Hadestown and West Side Story. Depending on your personal sense of humor and your definition of feminism, there are a few segments that miss the mark on both funny and feminist. … A winning and euphonious cast of ten delivers the riotously reimagined situations, distinctive personalities, and highly entertaining songs. … It’s a pleasure to see The York and Kellogg back together again in signature style with Penelope … even if it’s more female-centric than full-out feminist.
New York Times (Laura Collins-Hughes): Penelope paints its title character as the author of The Odyssey. It’s a promising twist … [but it] feels like a musical about and for men. In its cast of 10, there are just three women, including Britney Nicole Simpson, who makes a lovely Off Broadway debut in the title role. … The story that Kellogg and Weiner tell suffers from a failure of imagination, as if making her a weaver of tales rather than of cloth gives her definition enough. … This is the kind of show, though, that gestures toward open-mindedness by having the women explain to the men that they must abandon some of their entitled ways. “I’ll adapt,” Odysseus vows. But Penelope itself? It’s a bit of a throwback, in the guise of change.
Talkin’ Broadway (Marc Miller): Penelope throws a couple of clever curves into a familiar tale and manages to be that increasingly rare beast, an ingratiating new musical comedy. For a good stretch, anyway. … Kellogg plays by all the rules of traditional musical comedy storytelling: expository opening number, two-couple format, Act 1 finale with a plot-forwarding surprise, fun anachronisms, happy ending. … To director-choreographer Maltby’s credit, she amplifies the humor with bracing physicality. … Somewhat to Maltby’s discredit, she doesn’t entirely clarify the relationships or motivations. … Kellogg’s insistence on capping all this literate, apolitical nonsense with a gender-woke detour is annoying. But these are dire days, and some of us need musical comedy to help see us through them. We’ll take what we can get.
Theater Mania (Hayley Levitt): If you like a spoonful of sugar with your literary culture, Penelope could be an enjoyable way to pass two hours of your evening. … It’s a fun premise, but one that doesn’t seem to have been given much thought beyond its gendered twist. … Unfortunately, a frothed-up premise does not a story make — just as a female protagonist does not feminism make. And Penelope, in its collection of serviceable but altogether unremarkable musical numbers, often miscalculates how to push the right girl power buttons. … The authors of Penelope certainly don’t have to go the route of Broadway’s favorite histo-remix Six and envision a Penelope that leaves her husband, travels the globe, and joins a pop girl group. But if so little about her existing narrative has been changed, it’s reasonable to wonder why it was rewritten at all.