Adrienne C. Moore, Lance Coadie Williams, and Temídayo Amay, as a Southern family on a flooded rooftop in 1968, merging the tragedies of that era with Katrina almost four decades later. Sean Boyce Johnson as a Ulysses born in 1981 finds himself back in time. Photo by Julieta Cervantes @j_cervantes

By Cassandra Csencsitz

“Let us begin at the beginning so we may end at the end./Shake off the cares of this day, my friend. Close your eyes./Breathe in the perfume of mother nature: her still waters run deep/As do her blue skies. There is no griot greater.”

—From black odyssey by Marcus Gardley

“Ulysses is lost again, but this time in Harlem.” When I read that Classic Stage Company’s 2022-2023 season included an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey set in Harlem, as a lifelong Hellenophile and Harlem resident, I couldn’t wait to see what Obie-winning playwright Marcus Gardley had envisioned for Homer’s ancient Aegean tale—maybe a whole new kind of Harlem Renaissance. Having now seen the play, directed by Stevie Walker-Webb (Ain’t No Mo’) for Classic Stage through March 26, I can officially say how thrilled I am to be promoting this extraordinary work of dramatic art via our third dinner-theatre collaboration with CSC.

A self-described “playsical” fusing classic mythology, African-American history, and modern Harlem culture with some show-stopping tunes, black odyssey is nothing short of a revelation in Homer, departing drastically from the story we know to find its emotional core. While the centuries of Odyssey translations all provide epiphanies as we agonize over those famous adjectives—is Odysseus subtle, twisty, complicated, is the dawn rosy or red—ever wrestling between fidelity and poetry, adaptations know no strictures or bounds. They give the classics back to us in ways that, when successful, can expand our horizons in art and life. With Gardley’s map, the odyssey now goes from external to internal, becoming a quest for self-knowledge with our hero’s obstacles no more nor less than the life challenges that test us all.

In this version, Ulysses Malcolm Lincoln is a Gulf War veteran with blood on his conscience. Instead of Ithaca, home is Harlem, where his wife and son famously await his dragged-out return, clinging to his survival against logic and odds. And in lieu of the fantastical adversaries who delay the Greek’s return, we now have run-ins with his ancestors over milestones in Black American history, events that echo more tragically than the super-spat between Greece and Troy launched by one woman’s beauty. This Odyssey feels much closer to home.

Self-knowledge, then, itself becomes home, a place inside that stays with us—not Ithaca, not Harlem, neither Kansas nor wherever we hail from. Drawing on Ashanti culture, Gardley takes it one step further, comforting our timed lives with the immortality of protective ancestors who are always near. When Harriett D. Foy tells us this, you believe her.

What if god was one of us. As funny as she is godly, Harriett D. Foy reads the riot act to Marcus Gladney Jr., excellent as Ulysses’ son Malachai Lincoln (Telemachus in the Greek). Photo by Julieta Cervantes @j_cervantes

Played by Foy, in Gardley’s odyssey the goddess Athena chooses to mortalize herself to save her dearest descendants. On earth she becomes Aunt Tina, a great aunt we watch go from godly to grey as mortality takes its toll. And she is as convincing on Mount Olympus as she is on Sugar Hill. When “Aunt Tee” announces herself to Penelope—here called Nella Pea, splendidly inhabited by D. Woods—and is met with skepticism, she replies:

AUNT TINA: Just ’cause we don’t speak don’t mean I don’t listen. I’m wise, gal. Wiser than tree bark. Wiser than trees. Wiser than owls in trees and I’m a hoot. Now let me in!

(Nella opens the door. Aunt Tina enters.)

NELLA: I thought you said you was somebody’s Great Aunt.

AUNT TINA: I am. The emphasis be on the fact that I’m great.

Idiom, humor, and song are the spoonfuls of sugar that help reality go down. In this excellent WNYC interview with Gardley and Foy, the playwright speaks of feeling our need for joy today. Music bridges all differences, and I was relieved that the powerful singers in this production were only lightly mic’d, delivering nuance without artificiality. They sang fully, unrestrained, in a key befitting the epic nature of war, whether that war be Trojan, civil, or self.

Let freedom bling. A prop that should go down in theatre history: the steering wheel turned necklace that allows blind Super Fly Tireseas (James T. Alfred) to conjure a Cadillac-ship that cruises Odysseus around the foot of Africa. Photo by Julieta Cervantes @j_cervantes

Internal odysseys. Each life, each business, each attempt to put on a show is an odyssey fraught with the equivalent of monsters, tempests, and traps. Gotham’s journey of re-creation and ongoing pursuit of self-knowledge has included many, from renovating during a pandemic and a Penelopean wait for our liquor license to Omicron’s arrival mere weeks after reopening. Most challenging of all is the continued mission to fill 5,000 square feet each day in spite of a quieter New York, emptier offices, and the world’s evolving view of fine dining—an art form like any classic that must be newly translated to be heard.

black odyssey opened this weekend and has been reviewed, but before reading what the critics have to say, I want to commend this divine ensemble on their home run. Lest it sell out, I hope you will take advantage of our dinner-theatre experience, for which Classic Stage has generously saved Gotham seats.

If you see it, please email me your thoughts at cassandra@gotham.restaurant. I would love to hear how black odyssey makes you feel.

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In Gardley’s comic hands, the sirens who famously attempted to seduce Odysseus become a Supremes-esque trio including Ms. Ross, Tina Turner, and James Brown in drag, played by the great Lance Coadie Williams whose baritone brings down the house. Photo by Julieta Cervantes @j_cervantes

Ithaca
by C.P. Cavafy
translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

As you set out on the way to Ithaca
hope that the road is a long one,
filled with adventures, filled with understanding.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
Poseidon in his anger: do not fear them,
you’ll never come across them on your way
as long as your mind stays aloft, and a choice
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
savage Poseidon; you’ll not encounter them
unless you carry them within your soul,
unless your soul sets them up before you.

Hope that the road is a long one.
Many may the summer mornings be
when—with what pleasure, with what joy—
you first put in to harbors new to your eyes;
may you stop at Phoenician trading posts
and there acquire fine goods:
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and heady perfumes of every kind:

as many heady perfumes as you can.
To many Egyptian cities may you go
so you may learn, and go on learning, from their sages.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind;
to reach her is your destiny.
But do not rush your journey in the least.
Better that it last for many years;
that you drop anchor at the island an old man,
rich with all you’ve gotten on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave to you the beautiful journey;
without her you’d not have set upon the road.
But she has nothing left to give you any more.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca did not deceive you.
As wise as you’ll have become, with so much experience,
you’ll have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean.

No Place Like Homer: "black odyssey" Brings Everything to Roost

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