Erin Harrington reviews CLAS103: Greek Mythology, performed by Vincent Andrew-Scammell, and co-directed by Lucy Dawber, at Little Andromeda, Thursday 7 September 2023.
There’s a moment quite early on in the semi-improvised show CLAS103: Greek Mythology where actor Vincent Andrew-Scammell, wearing a ridiculous bed-sheet toga and giving a flirtatious take on Greek god Hermes, mimes handing an audience member an invisible smartphone. When he asks her what she sees she gamely takes the offer and starts to slowly scroll and scroll and scroll her way through whatever message he’s passed on. The audience cracks up – it’s a great little interaction – but it’s also a genuinely delightful instance of connection that can only work if the performer is fully warm and present and the audience is fully invested and feels looked after. It’s illustrative of the remarkable sense of trust and spontaneity that runs through the show, which offers a hilarious, empathetic take on Greek myth and the power of theatrical storytelling.
The show is a novel riff on a few familiar genres, including the show-as-lecture-as-show, and the contemporary dramatization of myth. Slightly stuffy world-renowned philosopher and classicist Professor Ross Jacob Livingston is here to transport us back to Ancient Greece, though a series of deft comic mishaps with a Dionysian artefact means an evening of cue cards and vague mumbling is invigorated, via The Muses, by the power of theatre. Cue lights, thunderous sound effects, and a smoke machine, with Little Andromeda’s tech rig being pushed as far towards ‘stadium rock’ as it can.
The show races between settings, genres and styles, as about a dozen well-maintained accents come and go. Each shift and new characterisation is unexpected, the comic timing impeccable. Initially, a series of vignettes introduces us to some of the Greek pantheon. We check our messages with Hermes, hang out on the dock with Charon, and offer sultry Apollo (by way of Serge Gainsbourg) some help with a pressing problem. Eventually, the action builds towards a bonkers multi-genre supercut of The Iliad that smashes together high character drama, blockbuster action sequences, and physical comedy. Heroes do their best and worst. Characters entreat, berate, and clamber through the audience. It’s a genuinely impressive performance – physical and very funny, with nothing between the actor and the audience but the bedsheet. It’s to the credit of Andrew-Scammell and co-director Lucy Dawber, and designer Elizabeth Frishling, that this almost bewildering variety of styles retains a degree of coherence. Andrew-Scammell also has a deep knowledge of the subject material, and meets a few curly audience offers with aplomb. From the reactions of the Classics majors I’m sitting between it’s the sort of show where the more you know, the more you get out of it.
I have more fun at this show than I’ve had at the theatre for a long time, although its denouement feels undercooked. I’m not sure if we’re hearing from the performer or the character, or if and how Prof R J Livingston has changed, which perhaps speaks to both the strengths and limitations of the frame narrative. That’s a pretty minor quibble, though, in a show that’s otherwise hugely entertaining. There’s so much material to work with, and Andrew-Scammell is so bloody good at doing it, I hope the gesture at the end to an Odyssey-based sequel isn’t just a tease.
Flat City Field Notes 