Hephaestus: A Greek Mythology Circus Tale
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The opening made me think that Hephaestus: A Greek Mythology Circus Tale would have an emotional through line focused on the character’s vulnerability. But it’s only a skeletal frame for the circus acts, which range from tightrope walking to juggling to spectacular work on the aerial silks, rings, and trapezes. True, Hephaestus was an artist of sorts who triumphed through his creativity, so there’s some connection with theater. And his metalworking skills are a good excuse for plenty of shiny costumes. The story itself, a Greek myth with many variants, gives Hernandez and Stillman lots of options for what tale to tell, what to incorporate and what to exclude. They include Hephaestus getting revenge on his mother by making a magic throne to entrap her, and her method of escape from it: she bribes her son by offering him Aphrodite in marriage. But the part where Aphrodite does Hephaestus wrong, betraying him with Ares, isn’t in the show. Greek mythology’s most famous mismatched couple, a crippled blacksmith and the goddess of love, are simply not part of the equation, even though this complexity might have fleshed out his character.
Maybe it’s natural that Lookingglass has cleaned up the myth–this is supposed to be a family-friendly production. But in other ways Hephaestus panders to the adult audience: the costumes are revealing and all the airborne gyrating and splits look like burlesque. Beautiful women in skimpy costumes are a staple of the circus, if somewhat quaint in our porn-permeated times. And these women are not only beautiful, they’re magnificent athletes. Still, when contortionist Olga Pikhienko as Aphrodite does a sort of mating dance for Hephaestus, her sinuous body taking on all kinds of positions not usually found in nature while her husband-to-be (and the audience) sits and ogles her, it’s a highly sexualized scenario. The narrator’s line after this scene got the evening’s only laugh: in her little piping voice the girl says, “Hephaestus was in love!”
