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Rating: 
Summary: What a fun introduction!
Review: Old and especially young will enjoy this terrific retelling, It is a chance to introduce even younger elementary students to these stories that have lasted through the ages.
Rating: 
Summary: Strip-mining the Spirit
Review: Talent and vision do not always travel together. The actor-storyteller performing this theatrically unfaithful adaptation of "The Odyssey" is technically gifted, but you and yours will receive in the end an over-orchestrated and hyperbolic insult to your intelligence and to the narrative, spiritual and psychological richness of Homer's great tale. The voices chosen for so many of the characters completely miss the mark. I enjoy dramatic chutzpah, and I don't insist on purity of text, but the incredibly vulgar and low-brow characterizations of Polyphemus, of Odysseus' shipmates, and of the suitors not only wear thin, they absolutely contradict these richly ambiguous characters' contributions to the story. The actor has little feeling for his feminine characters, producing shrill, breathy or whiny voices for the most part that are grossly inaccurate in the given (and important, I would think)contexts of these characters'personalities. And then, and worst of all, we have the belittling, undignified, sneering portrayal of the various divinites. One needn't be a latter-day Olympian to expect a sense of respect for one of the world's great spiritual and philosophical heritages, particularly from an artist who is mining one of its greatest and deepest legacies. This performance out-Disneys Disney in its dumbing-down of the divine. If you want to introduce your children, or anyone else's children to Homer, consider Padraic Colum's beautifully written "The Children's Homer," available through amazon, and written in short segments that work very well for evening, bedtime, or even car trip readings. You don't need 37 or 137 or even 7 voices to hold a listener's attention: you just need to trust the tale and respect your listeners' imaginations, two qualities lacking from this audio assault. As my son said when he heard a brief portion of the over-the-top performance on this cassette, "Dad, this is embarrassing." True enough.
Rating:
Summary: Strip-mining the Spirit
Review: Talent and vision do not always travel together. The actor-storyteller performing this theatrically unfaithful adaptation of "The Odyssey" is technically gifted, but you and yours will receive in the end an over-orchestrated and hyperbolic insult to your intelligence and to the narrative, spiritual and psychological richness of Homer's great tale. The voices chosen for so many of the characters completely miss the mark. I enjoy dramatic chutzpah, and I don't insist on purity of text, but the incredibly vulgar and low-brow characterizations of Polyphemus, of Odysseus' shipmates, and of the suitors not only wear thin, they absolutely contradict these richly ambiguous characters' contributions to the story. The actor has little feeling for his feminine characters, producing shrill, breathy or whiny voices for the most part that are grossly inaccurate in the given (and important, I would think)contexts of these characters'personalities. And then, and worst of all, we have the belittling, undignified, sneering portrayal of the various divinites. One needn't be a latter-day Olympian to expect a sense of respect for one of the world's great spiritual and philosophical heritages, particularly from an artist who is mining one of its greatest and deepest legacies. This performance out-Disneys Disney in its dumbing-down of the divine. If you want to introduce your children, or anyone else's children to Homer, consider Padraic Colum's beautifully written "The Children's Homer," available through amazon, and written in short segments that work very well for evening, bedtime, or even car trip readings. You don't need 37 or 137 or even 7 voices to hold a listener's attention: you just need to trust the tale and respect your listeners' imaginations, two qualities lacking from this audio assault. As my son said when he heard a brief portion of the over-the-top performance on this cassette, "Dad, this is embarrassing." True enough.
Rating:
Summary: Strip-mining the Spirit
Review: Talent and vision do not always travel together. The actor-storyteller performing this theatrically unfaithful adaptation of "The Odyssey" is technically gifted, but you and yours will receive in the end an over-orchestrated and hyperbolic insult to your intelligence and to the narrative, spiritual and psychological richness of Homer's great tale. The voices chosen for so many of the characters completely miss the mark. I enjoy dramatic chutzpah, and I don't insist on purity of text, but the incredibly vulgar and low-brow characterizations of Polyphemus, of Odysseus' shipmates, and of the suitors not only wear thin, they absolutely contradict these richly ambiguous characters' contributions to the story. The actor has little feeling for his feminine characters, producing shrill, breathy or whiny voices for the most part that are grossly inaccurate in the given (and important, I would think)contexts of these characters'personalities. And then, and worst of all, we have the belittling, undignified, sneering portrayal of the various divinites. One needn't be a latter-day Olympian to expect a sense of respect for one of the world's great spiritual and philosophical heritages, particularly from an artist who is mining one of its greatest and deepest legacies. This performance out-Disneys Disney in its dumbing-down of the divine. If you want to introduce your children, or anyone else's children to Homer, consider Padraic Colum's beautifully written "The Children's Homer," available through amazon, and written in short segments that work very well for evening, bedtime, or even car trip readings. You don't need 37 or 137 or even 7 voices to hold a listener's attention: you just need to trust the tale and respect your listeners' imaginations, two qualities lacking from this audio assault. As my son said when he heard a brief portion of the over-the-top performance on this cassette, "Dad, this is embarrassing." True enough.
Rating: 
Summary: The Odyssey Suite
Review: This is a retelling of Homer's great story by an actor/storyteller, and lasts just over four hours. By way of contrast, Ian McKellen's reading of Fagles's translation of The Odyssey clocks in at 13 hours, 10 minutes. One would think, then, that this version must leave lots out. Well, yes and no. It covers all the main adventures Odysseus has, nor does it hurry over them. (In fact, the Trojan horse sequence, which is just alluded to briefly by Homer, starts the story here and is given an expansive treatment, much of which actually comes from later writers.) So, Odds Bodkin tells Odysseus's story in full in four hours. Then what does he leave out? He leaves out Homer's expansive way of telling a story by means of repeated heroic epithets and extended dialogs. He leaves out the gods, mostly: their part of the story is brief indeed. All the careful planning that went into the defeat of the suitors is left out as well. It leaves out the adventures of Telemachus. All Odysseus's entertaining fabrications during his travels, these have been excised. And, as this version is intended for children, it leaves out the gruesome scenes at the end where the unfaithful servants are killed. You might say that it leaves out most of the matter that locates the story in a certain heroic pre-classical culture. Yet some flavor of that culture remains, and the well-known incidents in the story are certainly given their due. Thus we have, in addition to the Trojan Horse, Scylla and Charibdis, the visit to the Underworld, the cattle of Helios, the Sirens, the Isle of the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops, the misadventures on Circe's isle, and the long languishing on Calypso's isle. And it finishes up with a bang as Odysseus strings his mighty bow and lets fly an arrow through all the aligned ax-heads, then, revealed, turns in wrath upon the suitors who have been besieging his wife. This is certainly an entertaining version, and an excellent way to learn the story ' for child or grownup. Odds Bodkin is good at voices, so he can differentiate his characters well. This adds to the fun as he mixes accents and verbal mannerisms (Polyphemus reminded me of the Cookie Monster) in an energetic and colorful telling. It also helps that there is a more-or-less continuous musical background. Celtic harp and 12-string guitar are rarely obtrusive, but rather provide push to the narration. Anyway, to us, The Odyssey is a story, not a guide for living, but it is one of the central stories of our culture. And here we get that story (without undergoing trial by recitation), which is all that most of us want, really.
Rating:
Summary: Hear the Odyssey
Review: This is a retelling of Homer�s great story by an actor/storyteller, and lasts just over four hours. By way of contrast, Ian McKellen�s reading of Fagles�s translation of The Odyssey clocks in at 13 hours, 10 minutes. One would think, then, that this version must leave lots out. Well, yes and no. It covers all the main adventures Odysseus has, nor does it hurry over them. (In fact, the Trojan horse sequence, which is just alluded to briefly by Homer, starts the story here and is given an expansive treatment, much of which actually comes from later writers.) So, Odds Bodkin tells Odysseus�s story in full in four hours. Then what does he leave out? He leaves out Homer�s expansive way of telling a story by means of repeated heroic epithets and extended dialogs. He leaves out the gods, mostly: their part of the story is brief indeed. All the careful planning that went into the defeat of the suitors is left out as well. It leaves out the adventures of Telemachus. All Odysseus�s entertaining fabrications during his travels, these have been excised. And, as this version is intended for children, it leaves out the gruesome scenes at the end where the unfaithful servants are killed. You might say that it leaves out most of the matter that locates the story in a certain heroic pre-classical culture. Yet some flavor of that culture remains, and the well-known incidents in the story are certainly given their due. Thus we have, in addition to the Trojan Horse, Scylla and Charibdis, the visit to the Underworld, the cattle of Helios, the Sirens, the Isle of the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops, the misadventures on Circe�s isle, and the long languishing on Calypso�s isle. And it finishes up with a bang as Odysseus strings his mighty bow and lets fly an arrow through all the aligned ax-heads, then, revealed, turns in wrath upon the suitors who have been besieging his wife. This is certainly an entertaining version, and an excellent way to learn the story � for child or grownup. Odds Bodkin is good at voices, so he can differentiate his characters well. This adds to the fun as he mixes accents and verbal mannerisms (Polyphemus reminded me of the Cookie Monster) in an energetic and colorful telling. It also helps that there is a more-or-less continuous musical background. Celtic harp and 12-string guitar are rarely obtrusive, but rather provide push to the narration. Anyway, to us, The Odyssey is a story, not a guide for living, but it is one of the central stories of our culture. And here we get that story (without undergoing trial by recitation), which is all that most of us want, really.
Rating:
Summary: Great story!
Review: This is fantastic telling of Homer's Odyssey. Bodkin regales us of Homer's adventures, beginning with a scene inside the wooden horse of Troy, through confronting the Cyclops, battles with cannibals, and his long awaited return to Ithaca. Bodkin gives each character a distinct voice and develops moods and transitions with his guitar in the background. The changes in voices are so intricate that when I first listened to the tape, I thought Bodkin had put the recording together by blending several independently recorded tracks. But if you listen closely, you can hear coughs in the background, evidence that this was a recording of a live performance, and Bodkin managed to create all of the rich sounds found on the tape while reciting in front of a live audience. I managed to escape reading the Odyssey while I was in school. On the one hand, that's too bad, because now, having heard this story, I realize what a tremendous influence the story has had on all literature that followed, and how much I have missed over the years by not having any familiarity with the Odyssey. But on the other hand, it was fitting to have my first experience with Homer to be this one- -this story was meant to be shared orally, rather than read. And Bodkin is a master storyteller, who has made the tale come alive. Now that I've heard the story properly, I think I'm ready to study it more thoroughly with a book.
Rating:
Summary: Great story!
Review: This is fantastic telling of Homer's Odyssey. Bodkin regales us of Homer's adventures, beginning with a scene inside the wooden horse of Troy, through confronting the Cyclops, battles with cannibals, and his long awaited return to Ithaca. Bodkin gives each character a distinct voice and develops moods and transitions with his guitar in the background. The changes in voices are so intricate that when I first listened to the tape, I thought Bodkin had put the recording together by blending several independently recorded tracks. But if you listen closely, you can hear coughs in the background, evidence that this was a recording of a live performance, and Bodkin managed to create all of the rich sounds found on the tape while reciting in front of a live audience. I managed to escape reading the Odyssey while I was in school. On the one hand, that's too bad, because now, having heard this story, I realize what a tremendous influence the story has had on all literature that followed, and how much I have missed over the years by not having any familiarity with the Odyssey. But on the other hand, it was fitting to have my first experience with Homer to be this one- -this story was meant to be shared orally, rather than read. And Bodkin is a master storyteller, who has made the tale come alive. Now that I've heard the story properly, I think I'm ready to study it more thoroughly with a book.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful performance of a classic journey
Review: This is storytelling at its very best. While those unfamiliar with the Iliad and the Odyssey might need a bit of explanation regarding how Odysseus came to be inside the Trojan Horse at the start of the tape, the quality of the performance will rapidly grab the attention of the listener. Purists should be aware that this is a performance of the Odyssey, not a simple dramatic reading of the text. We found it a great way to introduce the classics to our children in a format that was enjoyable for the entire family. That said, parents should recognize that there is some violent content in the story which might not be appropriate for younger kids.
Rating:
Summary: Hear the Odyssey
Review: Your English teacher was wrong: Homer did not write the Odyssey. He sang it. Actually, scholars are still debating whether the blind mythic poet called Homer ever existed at all, but they do generally agree on two things: the Odyssey is one of the greatest stories surviving from Graecian antiquity, and it was originally meant to be sung, not read. Ancient bards, called rhapsodists, wandered through the hoods of ancient Greece, chanting their stories to all who would listen. Hundreds of generations later, we're still listening. Just two months ago, I listened to Odds Bodkin's rendition of the 2500-year epic on my car CD-player. Homer's Odyssey depicts the 10-year wanderings of Odysseus, as he tries to go home after he and the Greeks successfully sacked the city of Troy. Bodkin's version pares down these 10-year wanderings to a 4-hour audio presentation, but many of the signature adventures are retained (Included are: the Lotus-Eaters; Polyphemus; the Lystrigonians; Circe; Scylla & Charybdis; Calypso; Princess Nausicaa; plenty of storms and waves, crashes and crushes, and a lot more). What I don't like about this recording is that Bodkin has about three different voices that he uses for scores of characters; after a while, things start sounding familiar... Also, his attempts at female voices are a misfire; they all sound like Ms. Piggy with a sore throat. What elevates this recording beyond puppet-show drama, I think, are three things: Bodkin's enthusiasm, the musical track, and his sense of story. The soundtrack, a combination of 12-string guitar and harp, is soothing, mystical, rejuvenating, otherworldly; it could be sold separately. And, while most of the drama is shallow, I still have to admit there are moments when I was truly moved by this story. Know this -- Bodkin's version of the Odyssey is an adaptation, meaning he may skim here and embellish there, but he has full poetic license to do so, because he is adapting the work for children (and adults who love a good story), and for listening. As for the critics who bash this because it's not "true to the original," they, I would say, are missing the point. Some people just like to hear a good yarn. If you're in the mood for a funny and talented storyteller to make an ancient story sing again, check this out.
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