Who's afraid of Beowulf?

Not playwright and actor Jason Craig, who—along with theater troupe "Banana, Bag and Bodice"—has revised the Old English poem for the stage, mixing in contemporary references and skewering academic analysis. The Boston Globe reports:

When Beowulf makes his entrance as a bespectacled schlub in a bedraggled costume that suggests he got lost on the way to an Olde Medieval Faire reenactment, while go-go dancing warrior babes purr, “Here he comes, it’s that guy, that guy,’’ in a ’60s doo-wop style, you know this isn’t the “Beowulf’’ of the musty page.

Hey...who said the page was musty?

If Craig doesn't fear Beowulf, he's less relaxed about literary criticism--and that discomfort inspires one of the play's most significant twists:

[Craig] imagined three academics at a panel discussion, who eventually turn into the monsters that Beowulf must battle. He says he was drawn to “the idea of academia possibly destroying its own relationship with a piece of art that they love so much’’ and wanted to mock the scholarly tendency to get mired in minutiae.

Better than getting mired in battle with Grendel.