McLaughlin and Snider’s Penelope Draws Capacity Crowds to Gallatin’s Labowitz Theatre

The Gallatin School of Individualized Study recently hosted Penelope, a workshop production of a new music-theater piece written by playwright and actor Ellen McLaughlin, at left, and composed by Sarah Kirkland Snider, for six performances at its Jerry H. Labowitz Theatre for the Performing Arts. McLaughlin is best known for originating the role of the Angel in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and for a series of highly successful translations of Greek tragedies.
    Directed by Lisa Rothe, Penelope is a 90-minute music-theater piece featuring McLaughlin and a string quartet. It blends a first person monologue, song, and music for the string quartet to create a modern retelling of Homer’s Odyssey. In the play, a woman’s ex-husband appears at her door after an absence of 20 years, suffering from brain damage. A veteran of an unnamed modern war, he doesn’t know who he is and she doesn’t know who he has become. While they wait together for his return to himself, she reads him The Odyssey and through that story she finds a way into her former husband’s memory. The production included video projections of oceans and seagulls, and was complemented by lighting design by ML Geiger, head of lighting in the Tisch School of the Arts Department of Design for Stage and Film.
    The music was performed by Olivia de Prato, Beth Meyers, Lauren Radnofsky, and Amie Weiss. Penelope drew capacity crowds, which included New York producers and artistic directors.

—James Devitt