The Odyssey is Creation Theatre’s second collaboration with theatre group The Factory, following last month’s semi-improvised Hamlet. The two productions share many similarities (no scenery, no costumes, plenty of audience participation and use of the Norrington Room in Blackwell’s book shop) but The Odyssey’s grounding in the ever-evolving nature of oral storytelling allows a little more flexibility than the set text of a Shakespeare.

Although Homer’s story is followed chapter by chapter, each segment of this production is coloured by an audience member picking a theme or slant out of, rather fittingly, an urn. The night I went, the cyclops story was acted by ‘human puppets’ — audience members physically manipulated by the actors. Elsewhere, an actor recounts how they experienced the kindness of strangers, while another segment sees the actors’ bodies connected with long, wooden sticks.

Unfortunately, this makes this version of Odysseus’s return from the Trojan War hard to follow. Odysseus is played by multiple actors depending on the chapter, and his journey home to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus is also coloured not only by the witches and sirens of the text, but the multiple interpretations of the cast. The original text can be loaded with emotional resonance — the faithfulness of Penelope waiting for her man despite being vociferously pursued by a team of suitors, the growing up of a son desperate to know his father — all somewhat lost here.

But the scatter-shot approach turns up as many hits (for instance, the cyclops scene) as misses (the baffling, incoherent interpretation of the Nausicaa section). But, as with Hamlet, this is the nature of the beast — with actors constantly improvising and with possessions willingly given up by audience members — it’s going to be different every time, for better or for worse. But this is a more accessible and warmer show than Hamlet. Free from Shakespearean shackles, some actors shine. If you are familiar with the story or don’t mind not knowing all the details, it becomes clear this interpretation is as much about the telling of the tale as it is about the tale itself. The actors, and sometimes the audience’s participation, bring personal experiences to the show making it a strange hybrid of theatre, cabaret and group therapy.

The Factory clearly have a frequently chaotic and often frustrating way of approaching material, but their approach can also be strangely affecting, as shown by this flawed, but challenging and thought-provoking, production.