In around 750 BC an anonymous poet put the finishing touches on his epic The Odyssey. It is no accident that Odysseus’s name means “trouble”, or indeed, that the ancients called the unknown bard “Homer” or “Homeros”–which literally translated means “someone displaced and vulnerable”, a word with similar connotations to the modern terms “asylum seeker” and “refugee.” It is this idea of asylum, and Odysseus as the “eternal traveller” which, nearly three millennia later, has captured David Farr’s imagination. A synopsis of his stage adaptation of Homer’s work could easily be mistaken for a modern story of a refugee: “a man is washed up on a foreign shore and confronted by immigration officers as he wakes up on the beach. Refusing to answer his questions, they throw him in a detention centre with a torrent of abuse.”
The play is set in this detention centre with Odysseus detailing his travels orally, just as Homer and the other bards would have, to an audience of immigration officers and Trojan asylum seekers. Farr adopts the story-telling technique of “flash-back” (in which much of the “original” Odyssey is written) to incorporate the familiar stories of the Cyclops, who appears as a watch-tower “Transformer”-like figure with a lamp for his single eye; Circe; and the Lotus-Eaters. The majority of the poem is easily adapted to integrate these modern elements, incorporating a political message and making it highly pertinent. But what makes The Odyssey so easily and infinitely adaptable and relevant, yet enduring? Oliver Taplin, professor of classics at Oxford University, provides one theory:

I’m not in favour of museum reconstructions–faithful, pedantic, making it as much like the original as possible. It’s got to be assimilated, it’s got to be made fresh. In ages of anxiety, in ages of transition, people go for these archetypal works. I don’t think the ancient Greek world is a sacred cow on a pedestal. It’s been liberated.

One might even say that Homer himself had been inspired, as there is no definitive version of The Odyssey–his version, like Farr’s, Monteverdi’s, Atwood’s or Joyce’s might just as easily be seen as an adaptation.
David Farr is the most recent “liberator.” Like Monteverdi, whose opera The Return of Ulysses (1641), incorporates the end of the poem and the Coen brothers, who mirror the epic adventures of Odysseus in O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), he has been inspired by The Odyssey’s ability to transcend history and has realised Homer as part of our everyday culture, seeing that his tale can be interpreted and accessed at the broadest level. For Farr the attraction was the “overarching narrative;” “here’s a story about a general who goes to war in the east and believes he has won that, but then can’t get home. It’s absolutely clear that story will have resonance for us now.” Indeed, Edith Hall, professor of classics at Durham University, argues that The Odyssey cannot fail to have resonance. It is about personality and identity, survival and being alone. It has always had a meaning for people–to Greek philosophers the tale of Odysseus was an allegory for the journey of the human soul through life. “Early Christians saw Odysseus as the epitome of virtue, leaning to resist the Sirens’ call of temptation and fleshly pleasure as he sought out his true destination in heaven. Today we are more likely to interpret his journey as a psychological process.”
David Farr’s directing career began with highly improvisational pieces, involving two actresses, fellow students from Cambridge University–including now Hollywood actress Rachel Weisz–and a prop. These pieces, Two Actresses and a Step-Ladder and Two Actresses and a Table, were to launch Farr’s career. After winning an award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1991, Farr was offered the position of Artistic Director at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill in 1995, and moved to the Bristol Old Vic to hold the position of Joint Artistic Director in 2003, until last year when he was offered the position of Artistic Director at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. It is hotly tipped that in the future Farr will hold the position of Artistic Director at the prestigious National Theatre, London. Farr is both a writer and director; writing for television–the BBC’s Spooks; and theatre, where his adaptations include Crime and Punishment in Dalston, The Odyssey and Great Expectations and his original work includes The Danny Crowe Show and Elton John’s Glasses (winner of Best Regional Play, 1999 Writer’s Guild Awards). In 2003 Farr was also named ‘Best Director’ by the TMA awards for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Firstly, how did you get into writing and directing?
Started a company with two actresses. We wrote our own plays (often devised in rehearsal) and I directed and they acted. No sets, very simple but rather odd pieces. One of them won an award in Edinburgh in 1991. And that was it. I was asked to direct a play at The Gate Theatre.
You’ve written adaptations of Crime and Punishment, Great Expectations, the Odyssey, and the Nativity Story. What is it about an original text which draws you to adapt or re-tell the story? Had you always read and enjoyed the texts before even considering adapting them?
Always yes. And often quite a few years before. It’s then sometimes a political circumstance (the asylum debate in Odyssey, Turkish/Afro-Caribbean relationships with Crime and Punishment) that start me thinking about a particular story or book as a way into these themes. Crime and Punishment was the most exciting in that respect–to find such fertile similarity between Nietzsche-inspired intellectual and Farrakhan-inspired black supremacism was thrilling. Very proud of that one. But I seem to always have one big idea that gives me the momentum.
Once you have decided on a text to adapt or re-write, what are the steps that are gone through in doing so? And how much do you refer to the original when writing?
I refer very closely, reading a lot. Then I put it down and almost forget about it for a while which allows other, original ideas to percolate through. So the character of Roger Dawson (the immigration officer in The Odyssey) came in the writing. I knew there would be interrogators but I didn’t know he was going to come alive in the way that he did.
Are there any texts which you would consider to be ‘untouchable’ in terms of adapting and that you feel are at their most powerful in their purest and original form?
Two different questions here. Almost all great texts are most powerful in their purest form. But often the purest form is not touched by people that much and theatre can open it up. The Odyssey as a production has, I hope, led people closer to Homer. Is anything untouchable? No I don’t think so. But some texts are not so theatrical as others. Texts that tend naturally to being filmed I think are less theatrical.
In many original Classical Works such as The Odyssey much reference and reverence is placed on religion and the gods. In modernising the story, did it prove a problem in incorporating these elements to make them relevant to your audience, whose perspective is more secular?
Not really. God is very important to me in my writing so I’m keen to have a few around! And I like the friction between hyper-modernity and sudden appearances of Hermes and Athena. It’s exciting. The German writer Botho Strauss also does this very well.
Do you believe that reinterpreting a Classic Work can be more powerful than contemporary writing?
Is my The Odyssey contemporary writing or not? I think it is. When Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar, that was a new play but nothing was strictly NEW. It was an old story told afresh. I don’t see the distinction. I do think that when someone comes up with a great new story, that’s thrilling. To have written Crime and Punishment–a brand new story, shattering in effect –that is the greatest thing. But how rare is that?
Do you think that modern adaptations are more relevant and thought-provoking, as they bring up ‘issues,’ than just straight performances of the old stories such as Troy–the Hollywood blockbuster–and, if so, is there any place for ‘narrative’ creations such as these?
Blockbusters–whether new stories or adaptations–are more simplistic because they are more commercial. Often globally so. The sheer breadth of audience and financial imperative makes it hard for the films to remain distinctive. The authorial voice is lost and that is sad.
The Odyssey has taken many different modern forms: O Brother Where Art Thou?, Ulysses, Le Mepris and most recently The Penelopiad. Why do you think The Odyssey is so captivating to writers?
It’s about identity, it’s about male-female love, it’s about the gods and it’s about home. What else is there?
Was it your intention to incorporate the epic story telling tradition into The Odyssey by including singing, music and dancing–as muses would have sung parts of The Odyssey in Hellenic times? Furthermore, was it your intention that Odysseus should take on the role of Homer and be the ’story-teller,’ relating the travels? And if so, why?
Yes to both. I wanted to relate classical/ancient devices and rituals to a modern gypsy folk theatre tradition. To connect, through the Trojan refugee characters, modern migrants with ancient nomadic wanderers. Music is the most evocative way of doing this. We even used fairly ancient scales in some of the tunes.
How far do you think that the alteration of language alters the resonance of a play or adaptation? For example the recent Shakespeare adaptations on the BBC or the Chaucer re-works prior to them.
Hugely. When I adapted Paradise Lost I chose to keep all of Milton’s language. It seemed to me to be intrinsic to the value of the piece. I find the idea of doing Shakespeare without the language a bit absurd. They’re not even his stories mostly. So what of his is left?
Do you prefer writing your own, original work or adapting others’?
They’re very different. Writing my own stories is hard–the hardest thing in the world. I am about to try once more. A mountain! Adapting is thrilling and easier. You bounce off something already there. It feels improvisational, jamming off of a tune that you know is a classic.

David Farr is currently working on a new play inspired by, but not adapted from, The Trial for The National Theatre, an adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis for The Lyric this autumn and an adaptation of The Ramayana also for the Lyric. The Odyssey is available as part of a collection of his plays in David Farr: Plays published by Faber & Faber rrp. £14.99.