Mythos is a trilogy of full length shows in which Stephen Fry tells gripping tales of love and war, debauchery and revenge. I saw the first of these full length shows on a late Friday evening at The Lowry's Lyric theatre. In Part 1: Gods, we were treated to the origins of the Ancient Greek Gods.
I love so many things about Stephen Fry; his Englishness, his nerdiness, his sense of humour, his huge hands, his Oscar Wilde, his intellect and wit, and of course that full head of hair, but, I have never really experienced his storytelling in full. He has an incredible gift when it comes to storytelling. He holds an ability to create such vivid images with just his words, I had never actually experienced the joy of Stephen Fry live.
Fry entered the stage to a rapturous applause and with his feigned modesty and “stop its” he settled into the very minimal set, a single, very comfy looking armchair and moving projections on screens behind him. The projections were of a starry night sky, lit in blues and purples ready to take us on this mythical journey of the Gods. Fry, an experienced comedian, knew how to set up his audience (with flattery) and I was settled well. I am 8 ½ months pregnant and feel sleepy most of the time but the auditorium here was filled with anticipation. We started with, of course Uranus, or (we were offered the Latin pronounciation: stressing the 'U'), the Greek God of the sky and heavens, plus he fathered the Titans.
Stephen Fry listed Titans, Olympians, motals and nymphs like they were old friends of his. His easy lull led us to the major deities of the Greek pantheon. Impressively he reeled off the twelve Olympians (or rather, thirteen, Fry relayed, but they thought of the number thirteen as unlucky); Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes, Zeus and either Hestia or Dionysus. You see, Fry is very precise in his storytelling, often prompting us to “remember that name because we'll return to their story later, they're important”.
Fry's witty additional quirks to a character “he was a bit moody, a bit dark, a bit of an emo, I suppose” made for an excellent night of entertainment into the classics. Although he assured us this was not a play, or a classics lesson but an evening, as our ancestors before us had done ...with just words, it was a lecture I was happy to attend.
Now, I have very limited knowledge of Greeks Gods and have to confess I do not know much at all about the Greco-Roman world so I was a little worried that (as often happens) I may have ended up drifting off. Or that this would just become a long list of names I would try to remember later and get muddled. Alas, no need for worry, I was captivated by Fry's particular passion and enthralling enthusiasm for language, for Latin, for Roman counterparts, for his stories. And if I did drift a little I was always brought back gently with Fry's ardour and love for what he was speaking of.
The show was supported with a small amount of tech, sparsely littered with sound effects of things like thunder or a beautiful orchestra plus projections on the screens behind Fry. The projected images sometimes worked incredibly well, like the pre Raphaelite Art we saw or statues of the Olympians. There was a simple blue, almost watercolour looking, mountain, pleasing projections of a bed of roses or a dark forrest. Then there were projections of a 3D spinning stone, pop-ups of fire or a pomegranate losing its fruit however sometimes the quality of these projections were not up to scratch.
The show had great shape to it and the first half finished before it begun. Stories often took interludes with spin-off games mirroring trivial pursuit; Mythical Persuit or an interactive opprtunity to question Fry at "Questions with the Oracle"; we were encouraged to email questions during the interval. Brexit was brought up, of course a few happy birthdays were thrown around, Stephen also got the opportunity to promote his book to an interested 10 year old in the audience. This light relief allowed us to weave with Fry from story to story.
Stephen Fry is a great storyteller, maybe the greatest. His delivery and poise was just perfect, he has so much natural skill when it comes to this particular art-form.
Fry used his acting talent and accents, as well as a few well-placed contemporary references to create character and set scenes; from the cheeky smooth southern accent of Hermes, the mischievous Greek god of music, to Helios' (the word Helium stems from) hilarious high pitched voice to RP Hyacinth Bucket for The Queen of the Gods; Hera. He spoke of celebrity chefs and a sort of Olympia's Got Talent. There was humble modernness alongside emotion and truth in his articulation as well as his trademark witty humour.
One thing I struggled with during the show is how women are portrayed in such stories, often passive and subject to control of male Gods. For me, it is a difficult thing to listen to as a female in the twenty-first century particularly from a great orator such as Fry. But listening to Stephen Fry's version of the story of Kronus and Rhea was, for me, the highlight. Kronos, who fathered six children; Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus (again Fry reels the names off like a shopping list) ate five of his children, yes, he ate them! Being about to give birth myself and witnessing Fry's re-enactment of Kronos vomiting the children had swallowed, with a Fry comic stop “only 4 more of these to go” was morbidly very funny!
The show held important learnings for us; be careful what you wish for, the history of the honey bees' sting and what it's like to be a know-it-all like Steven Fry. The message that shone through was centred around Hestia, was the goddess of the hearth, the home, and domestic life. She was the first-born of the titans Kronos and Rhea and, like the others, was swallowed by her father. Fry considered modern society and the loss of the fireplace, the hearth, the loss of the shared TV entertainment or the centre of the family home. He spoke of us experiencing entertainment, these days, on separate screens in separate rooms with separate Deliveroo orders, and, whilst all this is true of our time I think Fry's view a little dated. Of course we must share stories and entertainment and come together but we must also embrace the wonder technology brings us, of being able to share further and wider in the world with the magnificence of the internet. Fry is from the world of TV and understandably doesn't want to lose this wonderful art of storytelling but we do it slightly differently now, the world of Netflix and YouTube is just another way of sharing stories.
There were morals, musings, mirth, merriment and pansophy and who better to spend an evening storytelling with than the Oracle himself, good old, Stephen Fry.
Reviewer - Cathy Shiel
on - 30/8/19
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