One of our first sights after the choric prologue is of a guy riding a man-scooter around the stage, dressed in an Ewok onesie. It’s a striking contemporary image of just how comprehensively annoying the suitors of Odysseus’ supposed widow Penelope are. Timberlake Wertenbaker shows her customary agility of ideas, stage business and language in this barely hour-long version of the classical Greek tale of Odysseus’ ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, best known in Homer’s poem the Odyssey.

This being the Unicorn, “the UK’s theatre for young audiences” as it bills itself, this version of the tale concentrates equally on Odysseus’ son Telemachus. His search for his father – an account of which is intercut with highlights from Odysseus’ journey – is also a form of rite-of-passage. Theo Solomon’s Telemachus can find no solace in a home where he is no longer welcome, while Jeffery Kissoon’s Odysseus begins to lose his grasp of the importance of going home, and even to question the memory of his son. Telemachus does not so much remember his father as construct him, a bemedalled hero striding purposefully across the world. When they meet, their plan for disposing of the suitors involves Odysseus disguising himself not as a beggar, but “as an illegal immigrant… maybe came here in a container”: suddenly ancient Greece becomes utterly modern.

The encounter scene is the heart of the play. It not only links the “before” and “after” phases of Odysseus’ return and Telemachus’ quest, but it drills deep to the core of the tale’s theme for young people: dealing with the issue of an absent parent, both the not-being-there and any subsequent reunion. Telemachus’ maturity dawns not just when he accepts the reality of the ragged, smelly man at the neighbouring café table as his father, but when he deals compassionately with Odysseus’ shortcomings rather than either denying them or repudiating him. The other principal delight of Purni Morell’s playful production is Ontroerend Goed alumna Charlotte De Bruyne as the goddess Athena, who in this scene simply sits there smiling, silently but eloquently, until the old and the young man recognise and accept each other.

Written for the Financial Times.