If your children are home for mid-winter break, why not take them to Taproot Theatre for The Odyssey.
I know, a Greek tragedy may not be something your kids would pick out themselves, but that's only because they haven't seen Taproot's performance of Homer's epic tale.
You know you're in for something different when prior to the play's start, aisle seat patrons are asked to keep their feet and belongings in front of them.
Minutes later, Athena, goddess of war, rushes off the stage and Hermes, the Olympic messenger god, sporting high top converse and a bright yellow baseball cap comes sprinting out of a corner of the intimate theater.
Putting on an original performance of The Odyssey is not an easy thing to do. Making it fun and kid-friendly seems to be feat for Odysseus himself but writer Mary Zimmerman and director Scott Nolte seem to have accomplished just that.
Zimmerman has taking the greatest and oldest adventure story in literary history and giving it a vibrant, contemporary make-over that's relevant to modern and younger audiences while staying faithful to the original poem.
The Odyssey is so much more than a curriculum-assigned classic Greek tragedy, it has all the elements of a modern blockbuster - a hero, monsters, tragedy, seductive women, action, humor and even a few musical numbers.
The play comically delivers the one-eyed monsters and male ego-stroking sirens while the agony of Odysseus twenty-year absence from his family and kingdom Ithica is told beautifully through an impressive musical performance by Nicholas Beach.
Taproot's The Odyssey is a cleverly adaptation that's well-performed and most of all, entertaining. High schoolers, this totally beats reading the SparkNotes.
The Odyssey runs through Saturday, March 5