‘Odie’ Takes Aim At Australian Masculinity Using Mythology

In a year where we’ve had a truly epic cinematic interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey hit our screens, it’s quite a delight to return to the poem’s spoken word roots in a Sydney Fringe gem like Odie.

Written and performed by a sensational Emrys Quin with astute direction from Emily Farrell, Odie is a fantastically funny reinterpretation of the foundational myth seen through a distinctly Australian lens. Through both its prescient commentary and gut-busting humour, it’s a show that uses The Odyssey as a framework to explore contemporary Australian masculinity to sincerely poignant effect.

Unlike the recent film that adapts the same story, Odie is much closer to what it would’ve been like to hear the poem in its original form. Quin is the only performer on stage, and he embodies the Queenslander hooligan Odie as he finds himself stranded in Sydney post-State of Origin as he attempts to return to his love Penny in the Ithaca Suites in a hilarious setup.

Odie’s allusions to The Odyssey are more than just an aesthetic choice. It’s actually a surprisingly robust adaptation of the poem that inherits some of its core themes – the weight of violence and the meaning of hospitality among them – while making interesting subversions that investigate the nature of Australian culture as a whole.

Odie smartly recontextualises Homer’s myth

For this, actor Emrys Quin is thoroughly prepared. He is a naturally enticing performer, inhabiting the violent larrikin that is Odie with almost frightening ease – but more impressive still are the sentences he spins, and the gravitas with which he performs them. It had been about 5 minutes of the performance when I realised that every line in Odie had rhymed, and his poetic script is rife with moments of both hilarity and harrowing as Odie journeys throughout Sydney to come home.

Like many of the best Greek myth reinterpretations, Odie truly shines with its most radical departures. Particularly, it takes aim at the very idea of being “Australian” and what it means to live in this culture and adhere to it blindly. That salient idea moves the show from simply being a highly entertaining, thrillingly performed Odyssey send-up to a sincerely thoughtful breakdown of the country that we live in.

We’ve all met an Odie before; loud-mouthed, alcoholic and despairingly close to violence at all times. But rather than simply despair at his existence, Quin and Farrell ask us to understand him, rather than simply see him as another maroon jersey in the crowd.

Odie is playing now at Sydney Fringe Festival.