Penelope

Ireland's Enda Walsh writes (and writes and writes) for a quirky quartet of men in a grotty, drained swimming pool—suitors for the hand of the faithful wife of Odysseus—who bicker playfully while ignoring a bloodstain glowing redly beside them. Unfortunately, their speeches are appalling, first-draft nonsense. What starts as overdecorated psychodrama crumbles under unrelenting waves of pseudopoetic blather.—Helen Shaw