Mary Zimmerman’s Argonautika straddles a number of boundaries—between ancient epic and modern drama, between comedy and tragedy, between poetry and theatre. Following the tale of Jason and the Argonauts, this modern adaptation based on the tale recounted in the Greek by Apollonius and in the Latin by Gaius Valerius Flaccus. But this is certainly no dry, creaking scholarly representation of the tale. Zimmerman’s play is defiantly modern, drawing on not only Greek mythology but hip hop, a smart, contemporary humor somewhat in the vein of a Tyler Perry comedy, and puppetry/costumes reminiscent of Disney’s Lion King. Although the hip hop numbers don’t do much for me personally, they seem strangely in keeping with the sassy Greek heroes, almost frat boy camaraderie of the Argo, and celebratory ethos of this swashbuckling sword-and-sandals play.

The Penn State Centre Stage production, directed by Steve Snyder, brought the play to vibrant life, with an effective blending of high energy celebrations, absurdist comedy, and rather ironic solemnity. Broadly speaking, these three categories break down as follows: the Argonauts spend much of their time celebrating, cheering, and dancing; many of their adventures are played out with a keen sense of the dramatic; and the relationship between Jason (Brandon Gregory) and Medea (Sadie Spivey) is a love story constantly overshadowed by the violence that will inevitable come between the two.

The first half of the play moves much quicker, as it is largely filled with the Argonauts various adventures prior to landing in Kolkhis—the land where the golden fleece, the object of their quest, is kept. In this first half, the stand out performers are Zuhdi Boueri as King Pelias and Zack Wold as Hercules. Boueri plays the fickle and temperamental tyrant to perfection as the elderly Pelias. His sassy and irreverent dismissals of his blundering servants suggest simultaneously the potential for immediate fits of rage and the impotence of that rage. Wold’s Hercules is equally comic, as the buffoonish strongman whose very enthusiasm for himself and for his own feats often leads him into trouble. But it is only with the loss of his beloved companion Hylas (Timothy Lewis) that Wold’s performance really becomes spectacular. Hercules’ mad grief for his friend pushes the character and the performance beyond the clownishness of the strongman, and shows the real range a skilled actor can bring even to a relatively one-dimensional character.

In the second half the pace slows dramatically, as the focus becomes Jason and Medea’s relationship, and Medea’s moral conundrum about whether to follow her heart and betray her family and city for Jason, or to betray her heart and remain true to her family and home. As the relationship between Medea and Jason develops, we have constant visual reminders of the violence upon which the relationship is built and which will ultimately destroy it. After Aphrodite (Julia Chereson) bribes Eros (Lewis) to fire an arrow into Medea, she continually appears with an arrow through her stomach and a widening blood stain across her dress. When first introduced, Medea’s dress is green, but by the time she escapes with the Argo it is entirely red. This suggests visually the ominous nature of the Jason-Medea relationship, and indeed while it is a passionate relationship it is also a relationship doomed from the start and deeply imbued with a fundamental violence.

Throughout the play, Gregory was a strong lead, and Johnique Mitchell played a strong and compelling narrator role as Athena. Gregory’s ease as the leader of the Argonauts was a delicate balance between quiet strength and a subtle willingness to stand apart from much of the crew’s raucous misbehavior. And Mitchell was a commanding presence guiding events, both as the principal narrator who helped orient spectators within the story of the Argonauts and as one of the principle goddesses, along with Hera (Jordan Cooper) protecting the sailors on their voyage.

The production was visually appealing, with Greek inspired costumes with modern touches, unique lighting techniques and shadow performances, and Lion King-esque puppetry. The two fire breathing bulls that Jason has to yoke, for instance, were two person puppets consisting of several articulated body portions and two back legs run via poles. Or the dragon which never sleeps was created by perhaps eight actors holding portions of a giant dragon face and moving them rhythmically to give the appearance that this was one creature feeling and expressing emotions.