Poem Analysis: Ithaca Road By Robert Kronk

1084 Words3 Pages

Comedy, tragedy, or… Ithaca road is a comedy production aimed at teenagers. However, it seems to overdo it in some instances. For instance, they seem to have read a textbook on how to write a play for a teenage audience. Yes, they keep the set simple and the stage never changes, but they do this at the expense of the simplicity of the plot and characters (which is vastly more important). Also, they make classical references. No teenage student nowadays is expected to have read the odyssey. Yet the play incorporates events and names from the poem to get its point across. For instance, the home of the children is known as Ithaca – Odysseus’s homeland. Like him, they are carried away for twenty years or there abouts, divorced from their parents and family, and eventually return. Then there are the sirens, the bully girls who try to carry her off. And here choice of themes and way of getting them across is worse. They seem to have done high school English and thought …show more content…

The play deals with the issues faced by young people growing up through the eyes of two children, Tilly and Ben. About to begin year eight and head off to boarding school, these two twins are full of anxieties, hopes, and fears about the future. They have built their own imaginary world, where they spend most of the time imagining what will happen. The play is very relatable to anyone who has been concerned about transition, and who has an imagination. But it fails to keep its audience engaged. Though it is aimed at teenagers, and manages to deal very weel with the issues it discusses, it does not do enough to hold its audience. It is not a slapstick comedy, like most productions aimed at young people. Neither does it seek to hold its audience emotionally. So it’s not a tragedy. Or a comedy. Or a tragicomedy. So what is it? It’s a literary

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