The Odyssey: A Play

With its inspired counterpointing of Homeric and Caribbean themes, Derek Walcott’s play The Odyssey, commissioned by Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company, springs from the same imaginative sources as his epic poem Omeros.

＂[The Odyssey features Walcott’s] voluptuous metaphor making and severe truth telling.＂--Time

Episodes of the story of Odysseus’ protracted wanderings from fallen Troy to his island home of Ithaca are pungently interspersed with a commentary by the blind singer Billy Blue. Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, the giant Cyclops, Circe and her revelers, ghosts, and mermaids are among the cast. With its vast sweep and richly figurative language, The Odyssey confirms that Derek Walcott is as compelling a playwright as he is a poet.

Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was born in St. Lucia, the West Indies, in 1930. His Collected Poems: 1948-1984 was published in 1986, and his subsequent works include a book-length poem, Omeros (1990); a collection of verse, The Bounty (1997); and, in an edition illustrated with his own paintings, the long poem Tiepolo’s Hound (2000). His numerous plays include The Haitian Trilogy (2001) and Walker and The Ghost Dance (2002). Walcott received the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.