If you’re familiar with Homer’s epic ‘The Odyssey’, you know it tells the story of the cunning warrior Odysseus, who embarks on a ten-year journey home after the decade-long Trojan War. Meanwhile, his wife Penelope stays behind, fiercely loyal and sharp-witted, using her intelligence, clever repartee and quiet strength to hold everything together.
That enduring story gets a fresh, lyrical reimagining in ‘Penelope‘, a new musical by Philadelphia composer and arranger Alex Bechtel. Co-written with Grace McLean and and its director Eva Steinmetz, and starring vocalist-actor Rachel Camp, ‘Penelope’ comes to Theatre Horizon in partnership with the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, running May 7 to 18.
Bechtel began personalizing the plight of Homer’s Penelope during COVID when the pandemic’s long lockdown separated him from the people he loved romantically and professionally.
“I was quarantined in separate cities from the person I was dating at the time,” says Bechtel. “In my head, the songs from what would become ‘Penelope‘ began appearing in my head.
“The only way I could process such a precarious time was by making work,” he says. “The world is strange and being remade anew every moment, and for many of us, it is scary and sad… in those times, we reach out for myths, stories and songs that could ground us.”
To Bechtel and his co-writers, Penelope was a symbol of isolation and of the composer feeling far from everything that he loved.
“She makes a choice to remain strong, clever and resourceful in protecting her connections,” he says.
With the aid of a Greek chorus of percussion, string and reed players, and a liberal number of cocktails imbibed throughout her staged walk through the musical, Penelope – the character and her story – is mesmerizingly engaging and hypnotically heroic, always.
Building on the intimacy of Bechtel’s earlier recording, he and director Eva Steinmetz—his longtime collaborator since their days at Pig Iron Theater’s clown school—began deconstructing the original material for ‘Penelope’, reimagining and expanding both its narrative scope and musical landscape.
“We had to figure out how it would live, bigger,” says Bechtel. “At heart, I’m a balladeer writing introspective ballads that make people cry. But I also went to clown school, so humor became an important part of what new material we made for ‘Penelope.’”
Going from “10 cues on the album to 21 throughout the show, Penelope gets to move through a much wider set of experiences while inviting the audience along,” says Bechtel. The composer’s characterization of Penelope, once combined with the ideas of his co-writers Steinmetz and McLean (the latter who played Penelope on stage before Rachel Camp) allowed the titular role to inhabit both deeply fragility and muscularly empowered might, faith and determination in the face of abandonment.
“We are really invested in the full spectral range of emotional experience for that character… rather than, say, rah-rah, girl power feminism,” says Bechtel of he and his fellow co-writers. “It is more challenging and satisfying to render a character with strength, along with vulnerability, rage, tenderness and weakness and hilarity.”
Rachel Camp brings depth and dynamism to the title role in ‘Penelope’, adding star power to an already ambitious and artfully crafted production.
“Other women have played Penelope, and they’re all very different. But there’s something about this show that retains the core of what it is, and the character retains the core of who she is – that makes me feel good as a writer,” says Bechtel. “Women of different age ranges and ethnicities can be Penelope. All of our Penelopes have been fierce, smart and inventive, and silly-stupid in the best way, and smart.
“This role gives women theater actors between 30 and 50 something that is just them on stage, holding, carrying and connecting with an audience, while finding joy and challenge.”
‘Penelope’ will be on stage at Theatre Horizon from May 7 to 18. For information and tickets, visit theatrehorizon.org/penelope
