Odyssey The Epic Musical

Had its first preview last night, pretty cool. Aerial stunts, puppetry, and the cast includes Emma Zaks and Miranda Sings! Only runs a little over a week I think...

http://www.odysseythemusical.com/

Updated On: 10/25/11 at 05:17 AM

I don't think any of them are students, I think they're all a little older than that. Pretty sure most of the cast is recent graduates, but then there's some people even older than that.

There was a 1 performance flop of a similar musical with Yul Brynner & Jaon Deiner that played the Palace called Home Sweet Homer

I saw it. The music was great and ...... I have Yul's scrawl of an autograph on the Playbill.

---

Home Sweet Homer opened and closed January 4, 1976. Joan Diener had a great act two fiery showstopper called, "Did He Really Think."

Before it came to New York it had a try-out/tour? where it was called, "The Odyssey."

I am going this Odyssey tomorrow night and am expecting a fun, campy night at the theater. I assumed they chose the name in at least part to allude to The Odyssey/Home Sweet Homer. How can the Brynner/Diener flop not be evoked when thinking about musicalizing this material?

---

Updated On: 10/24/11 at 05:20 PM

I saw Odyssey when it was in Los Angeles before the switch to Home Sweet Homer. It was...not good. And not memorable. All I recall was some song like "Tomorrow...tomorrow...tomorrow" and Joan Diener singing about where did Odysseus get all that hair (as Brynner was wearing a very obvious and bad wig). At that point, I think the book was still credited to Erich ("Love Story") Segal. I remember some notes in the Playbill about how the show had already undergone many changes and that there was a Cyclops puppet left behind in Philadelphia or someplace. The LA version opens with Odysseus leaving Circe and then the rest of the show is in Ithaca.

Adam -- please look at your original post. You wrote: aerial STUDENTS. I'm assuming you meant aerial STUNTS? That was the purpose of my post.

---

Well I survived the epic, and sadly it's more reminiscent of a "Her First Roman" than a "Golden Apple." (Realize Roman isn't an Odyssey story, but parts reminded me of it. The second chorus number was a complete "What are you doing in Egypt?" moment.)

There are some campy moments for sure, and I mean real camp because I'm certain most was unintentional. I definitely laughed through most of it so I'm not sad I went by a long shot. The campy scenes did alternate between some deadly serious/dull moments with ballads that would have made Frank Wildhorn proud.

AdamBritten2- Are you the director/book writer/lyric writer? If so I would rather just PM you some thoughts rather than post more here.

---