Persephone The Musical by Jazzhands Productions at The Junction Cambridge

Review by Angela Singer

This impressively performed show is a modern twist on a tale dating back as long as humans have been telling stories. It explains why there is summer, winter and spring. Now re-told with song, dance and adroit performances, this is Persephone for the Me Too generation.

The original story from the Ancient Greeks and retold by the Romans has the young and beautiful Persephone wandering in the flowering fields when she is kidnapped by Hades, the God of the Underworld. The story is harsh, it is known as the rape of Persephone. He steals her away.

Persephone’s mother, Demeter, the Earth Mother also known as Ceres, is the God of the crops. In distress at her daughter’s loss, she refuses to let anything grow in Olympus until her daughter is returned. Now people must starve.

Demeter begs the god Zeus, brother of Hades, to return her daughter to her. He grants her wish and sends his messenger Hermes (or Mercury) to bring her back.

But Hades says Persephone can only return to life if during her stay in the underworld, she has eaten nothing. But it has been a long time. Hungry, she has eaten six pomegranate seeds. Thus, the kidnapped girl can return for six months of the year. Only for those six months, will Demeter allow the crops to grow and the world to flourish. That is why we have winter and summer.

In this touring production, a musical written and performed by Oxford students, the kidnap becomes a courtship. Persephone (Bethan Draycott) meets Hades (played by Peter Todd) as a young man in the woods and falls in love with him. Though later she regrets that she fell in love with a man just because she thought he was kind. Her mother, Demeter (Emma Starbuck) laments: “How can I protect my daughter in a world run by men.”

Zeus, a god known for his philandering, played smoothly by Lorcan Cudlip-Cook, allows Persephone to return home but on her return demands to see her and rapes her. So Zeus is the baddie here, not Hades.  This adds another layer to the story as Zeus and Hades clash so we have sibling rivalry as well as seduction and survival. It also gives us a neat performance by Rachel Smyth as Zeus’s jealous and scheming wife, Hera. At one point, they are so estranged, the couple speak only on landline telephones. One imagines that gods do that. Can’t see them with mobiles.

Written by Oxford students, Emma Hawkins and Carrie Penn, this is an enjoyable show. It is played with conviction, the characters are all well observed and credible. The music is beguiling and the singing is powerful. The story takes a different path from the original but why not? The idea is to entertain an audience and it certainly does that.

Persephone the Musical will be at The Little Theatre, Doncaster on August 9 and 10, Valley Community Theatre, Liverpool from August 12 to 14 and The Courtyard, London from August 17 to 21.