The Return of Ulysses

The play begins with an extremely simple situation: Odysseus returns after a very long absence and finds Penelope again. But this return, which should constitute the happy culmination of the mythological story, immediately becomes problematic. From her very first words, Penelope observes that time has passed: her body has changed, her hair has turned grey, her hands have grown old. But above all, she herself is no longer the woman Odysseus left behind. His return therefore does not make it possible to recover the past: it brings face to face two people who have lived separately for twenty years. The metaphor of the broken vase returns as a fundamental image: what has been broken by time cannot simply be put back together. Odysseus’ return does not repair the absence; on the contrary, it makes it visible. The play thus poses a profoundly contemporary question beneath the myth: can you really find someone again after waiting for them for so long?

Instability is a central element of the text. The spectator never knows entirely where Penelope stands: is Odysseus really there? Is he a memory? A projection? A fantasy? A ghost? Or can all these possibilities coexist? The text deliberately sustains this ambiguity. Penelope alternately claims that she recognises Odysseus, that she was no longer waiting for him, that he is there, and then seems to have spent years living with “visions” and “ghosts” of him. The character therefore moves constantly between reality and imagination. This construction makes the boundary with madness not a psychological subject to be explained, but a dramaturgical space. Ultimately, what matters is not determining whether Penelope is “mad”, but understanding that twenty years of waiting have made the boundary between the real man and the imagined man extraordinarily fragile.

Penelope has not merely waited for Odysseus: she has had to live with the absence of a man who could still return. Her mourning is therefore impossible to complete. She can neither make Odysseus disappear once and for all, nor truly continue her life as though he were dead. The text therefore takes the character through a series of contradictory states: hope, memory, desire, anger, resentment, the fantasy of reunion, and finally disillusionment. But the return does not bring this process to a close. It reopens it. This is what makes the situation tragic: Penelope must mourn not only the absent man, but also the man she constructed in her imagination, and the life she imagined she would recover with him. The passage in which she imagines their future as that of “two old people” waiting for death is particularly revealing: she discovers that what she desired for twenty years — his return — may have become something she no longer truly desires.

Penelope speaks constantly about her body: her hair, her hands, her skin, her desire, the bodies of other men, Odysseus’ body. This gives time a physical dimension. It is not simply an abstract duration: it is inscribed in the flesh. Sexuality also plays an important role. Penelope asserts her desire, speaks of other men, compares bodies, and remembers her lovemaking with Odysseus. This dimension is important because it refuses to reduce Penelope to the faithful and passive woman of the myth. Her body has continued to live during Odysseus’ absence. And this is precisely where the play becomes unsettling: she can desire Odysseus and reproach him for his absence; want his body and reject a life together; dream of their reunion and wish for him to leave again. Desire resolves nothing.

The play clearly shifts the perspective of the Odyssey. In the traditional story, Odysseus is the one who travels, faces dangers, encounters women, and lives the adventure. Penelope is essentially the one who stays behind and waits. Here, Penelope is the one who remains, and who questions the suspension of time while the other was out living it. Odysseus’ assumed entitlement is central: his adventures, his lovers, but also the right he seems to claim to return and expect everything to resume as before.

One sentence is particularly important: “You left, and everything was supposed to remain unchanged all that time.” It overturns the power dynamic of the myth. Why should the absent man have the right to find intact what he left behind? Penelope’s faithfulness is therefore no longer presented as an obvious heroic virtue. It becomes a complex and sometimes painful experience, sometimes contradictory, and above all a choice that belongs to her.

The various appearances of the return form a series of inner scenarios that Penelope moves through: she imagines what she might say, what she might feel, what she might forgive or refuse.

The text thus becomes less a linear story than a succession of possibilities.

Penelope has waited for Odysseus’ return for so long that waiting itself has become part of her identity. If Odysseus arrives, she will have to discover who she is without that waiting. The long-awaited return becomes the ultimate ordeal: after spending her life waiting for an absent man, Penelope must confront the reality of a man who has returned, but also the impossibility of recovering the woman she was when he left.