A short time passes and Odysseus sleeps.
This opening scene in the tableaux Donald McClain insisted was the most difficult in the entire program. During the rehearsals he had been possessed by the fear that he would not be able to produce the illusion, so that his audience would not take him seriously. Therefore, the tableaux would begin and end in disaster.
Don need not have troubled. Very handsome and heroic he appeared, his dark hair grayed to represent the age of the Greek hero who had wandered so many weary years after the siege of Troy.
While Odysseus slumbers the Princess Nausicaa and her maidens come down toward the river. Unaware of the sleeper, they begin washing their clothes in the river and afterwards spread them out to dry in the sun.
Victoria Drew, as the Princess Nausicaa, wore a gown of bright blue with a Greek design in silver braid. Her bright red-gold hair was bound in a silver fillet. Her maids were Margaret Hale, Edith Linder, Martha Greaves and Julia Murray. Their costumes were white and crimson, yellow and green.
In making a careful study of the costumes worn by the early Greeks, Miss Frean and the Troop Captain had been surprised to find that white did not play so important a part in their dress as they had supposed. Together with their love for the beauty of line and form the Greeks possessed an equal love for color.
Nausicaa and her maidens begin a game of ball on the sands. The princess misses the ball and as it rolls into the water she gives a cry that awakes Odysseus.
He comes forward and asks Nausicaa’s aid.
Together they move toward the palace of the Sea-kings, when the first tableau ends.
The second scene shows Odysseus seated inside the tent narrating his adventures to the good King Alcinous and his wife, Queen Arete.