Olympus, Inc.

Even though World Literature 2, the second half of a year-long freshman English class at my high school, was supposed to focus on ancient mythology, my misfortune of being near the very end of the alpha-rotation for Arena Day that year left me with an incompetent student teacher as my instructor for the course. While I enjoyed the books we read in the class (Animal Farm and The Diary of Anne Frank), it would have been nice to get that background in mythology we were supposed to have by the end of our first year in high school.

As a result, I know close to nothing about Greek and Roman mythology and anything dealing with those two topics is inexplicably intimidating to me.

That missing foundation in mythology sure would have been helpful to me when we were studying LeBrun and history painting in my Art History class earlier this quarter, and I probably would have gotten into the brilliantly written plot of "Olympus Inc.," Company 157's final production for Fall Quarter, much more quickly at today's performance with that knowledge in mind.


While I took the time to skim the "Brief Lesson in (Some) Greek Mythology" printed in the program as I waited for the performance to begin in the semicircular theater in Galbraith Hall, the condensed overviews of each god and goddess did not sink in quickly enough for me to catch many of the snide quirks and nuances in each reincarnated character's personalities during most of the first act of the play.

It wasn't until I really studied the information on the page more carefully during intermission that I began to truly appreciate the excellent writing and extremely talented performances by the cast.

Even though there were a few very funny moments scattered throughout the first act, I thought some parts moved a little too slowly, though not knowing the history behind each character's inspiration probably affected my understanding of the characters and the plot when they were first introduced.

When I finally started to become more acquainted with each character and the plot near the end of the first act, things really started to pick up speed, and the entire second act was absolutely hilarious.

The final scene, featuring Jesus (pronounced "HEY-SEUS"), Mary and Joseph, a Star War-esque revelation, and a nod of the hat to classic Scooby Doo, was probably the most brilliantly written scene in the entire play; every single tidbit (no matter how small or insignificant it seemed in the first act) mentioned earlier somehow found its way back into the final scene and the culmination of all those familiar elements put into the outrageous new situation was side-splittingly hilarious. I was laughing so hard that I was gasping for air at one point.

At the beginning of the quarter, my history professor used the "law of storytelling," where everything mentioned must hold some kind significance and coherently lead to the plot's development, to contrast the randomness of real life events recorded in history. Michael Swaim, who wrote and performed spectacularly as "Mr. Zusu" (Zeus) in Olympus Inc., executed that law perfectly and weaved together a very smartly written comedy that audiences with prior knowledge of mythology would appreciate immensely and audiences who knew absolutely nothing about the world of the immortals could still laugh at and enjoy.

I guess the guys at the San Diego Asian Film Festival who claimed that UCSD had an awesome theater program (and were subsequently laughed at by the entire theater full of people) weren't kidding after all!