Daily Mail - 23.08.2019

Page 55

it’s friday! theatre

The Doctor (Almeida, London)

Verdict: Strong medicine ★★★★✩

Mythos: A Trilogy

(Festival Theatre, Edinburgh)

Verdict: Hitchhiker’s guide to antiquity ★★★★✩

by Patrick Marmion

E

merging from Stephen Fry’s

epic nine-hour, one-man

Odyssey through greek mythol-

ogy, i felt — how can i put it —

rather deep-Fry-ed. And i mean

that as a compliment.

mercifully Fry’s new, touring show is divided

into three sub-marathons — gods, Heroes,

men — of three hours apiece, each with a

20-minute interval. But it’s still a stiff chal-

lenge for bottom and spine, let alone mind.

Odysseus himself in his peripatetic

wanderings after the Trojan War might have

been more confident of one day getting home.

But by the gods, Fry milks every minute of

his allocated 480 in a masterclass of storytell-

ing. Speaking seemingly off the cuff, he starts

with the cosmic chaos before creation, then

warns us we’re going to have to get used to

incest, as the god Kronos and his sister rhea

beget their son Zeus — CeO of the gods.

narrated from a comfy leather armchair, it

feels a bit like Jackanory meets The Hitchhik-

er’s guide To The galaxy (Fry’s old friend

Douglas Adams would surely have approved).

All he has for back-up is sound effects with

projections of outer space, pastoral greek

landscapes and magical woodland glades.

if, like me, you’ve wondered how these myths

fit together, this is the perfect way to find out.

How the Pantheon of the gods was formed.

How Prometheus moulded humans from mud,

but was forbidden by Zeus to give us fire. How

Pandora released evil into the world from a jar.

DrJuliet’smedicalmoralmaze

Dramatic hit

and myths:

Fry’s epic

endurance

test...

In the

hot seat:

Stephen

Fry holds

forth

Doc horror: Juliet

Stevenson seethes

Daily Mail, Friday, August 23, 2019

in Part ii, Heroes, the tales of

Heracles and Theseus loop into

one another via the former’s 12

labours and the latter’s encoun-

ter with the minotaur.

Then, in the final third instal-

ment, men, it’s menelaus,

Agamemnon and the greeks

versus Hector and Paris in the

battle for Helen of Troy... before

Odysseus does finally make it

home to ithaca.

With his cubist features

and charity-shop couture, Fry

is a comforting figure.

He has learned vast tranches

of text from the three books on

which this production is based

(the last, men, is as yet

(^) unpublished). But he likes to
ad-lib and offer tasty asides,
too; taking childlike delight in
his material.
The audience, meanwhile,
select subjects for his eager
digressions in a game of ‘mythi-
cal Pursuits’ (reminiscent of his
TV programme Qi). You can
even pose your own questions
for his ‘Oracle at Del-Fry’ (groan)
by emailing him in the interval.
But be warned: Fry has a
penchant for affecting cod
regional accents. So the gorgon
slaying Perseus is given an Alan
Bennett-style Yorkshire spin.
H
APleSS Andromeda,
lashed to a rock in the
red Sea, sounds like
Charlotte Church. On
the other hand, the mighty
Heracles is rendered as a Brum-
mie — suggesting that he’s
rather dim but loveable (people
of Birmingham, rise up against
this caricature!).
naturally, it’s lavishly garnished
with Fry’s love of etymology. He
explains how hermaphrodites
were revered as the original
‘intersex’ people; how Phrygian
caps are now worn by Smurfs;
and how ‘sycophancy’ comes
from the greek to ‘show your
figs’. And, as it happens, Fry has
his own weakness for showing
his figs and says ‘bless you’ after
every ripple of applause. An
interesting invocation for an
avowed atheist.
Yes, the format is repetitive —
and you may find one show is
marathon enough (they work as
stand-alone pieces). it is, none-
theless, an exceptional trilogy.
Fry is a one-man Wikipedia,
lamenting the lapse of tradi-
tional storytelling. Art, he tells
us, was in Ancient greece the
daughter of memory — the god-
dess mnemosyne.
And as a feat of memory, this is
very fine art indeed.
n FOR tour dates and
information visit
stephenfrymythoslive.com
BAZBAMIGBOYEISAWAY
JulieT STeVenSOn is the kind of physician who
answers the question ‘is she going to die?’ with
a scoff and a dry: ‘Aren’t we all?’ not what you
necessarily want to hear in intensive care.
As the titular doctor, Stevenson is hard as
nails: a grammatical pedant, a fierce
defender of her profession and, in this
new piece by robert icke, up to her
neck in a medical ethics and public
relations scandal.
Spoiler alert: the patient dies.
A witch-hunt ensues because The
Doctor prevented a priest from
administering the last rites. The fury
blooms beautifully into a full fiery
kerfuffle over identity politics,
sexism and anti-Semitism.
‘Should a Catholic patient have a
Catholic doctor?’ we’re asked
again and again. Stevenson is a
mighty presence. She rages,
shakes, admonishes, weeps.
There’s real fire behind her
eyes, stoked by the drama
playing out. Slowly her life is filled in with tales
of grief endured and hurdles overcome. it’s
worth seeing just for her. it’s a shame, then, that
most of the rest of the cast are a bit flat. Her
mad passion is matched only by Paul Higgins,
who, as the frustrated priest and later the
grieving father, is on sizzling form. ria
Zmitrowicz, too, is very watchable as a confused
teen who makes the sagest observations.
The play sometimes feels like a TV debate.
That’s not helped in the second half
where it does turn into a TV show: a
cross between moral maze and Kilroy.
So where before the cast was race, age
and gender-blind (a short woman
introduces herself as roger; a black
woman refers to herself as white),
suddenly everyone is as they appear, and
must defend themselves against
charges of being ‘unwoke’ or
‘unconsciously biased’.
A charming wit helps here:
there are jokes about
insurance and the present
participle. Yes, it’s baggy
(three hours) and bleak.
But i was still hooked.
LUKE JONES
Picture: DAVID COOPER
Picture: MANUEL HARLAN