EPIC: The Circe Saga - Jorge Rivera-Herrans (Music Review)

If you haven’t been on TikTok, you probably don’t know of Jorge Rivera-Herrans’ journey to turn the Odyssey into a musical known as EPIC. The project started in 2019, but the first TikTok about EPIC wasn’t put out until January 2021. In these videos, Rivera-Herrans talks about the process of writing the musical and the choices he makes such as what instruments he uses in the music to denote certain characters. Also using TikTok, Rivera-Herrans also did auditions for some of the characters.

Ultimately, EPIC is split into two acts consisting of twenty songs each for a total of forty songs total. To release the musical, Rivera-Herrans has split the songs into Sagas. So far a total of four sagas have been release: The Troy Saga (released December 25 2022); The Cyclops Saga (released January 27 2023); The Ocean Saga (released December 2023); and the most recent The Circe Saga (February 14 2024).

The Circe Saga picks up with what is left of Odysseus’ crew washing up on Circe’s Island after barely surviving Poseidon’s wrath. It consists of four songs: ‘Puppeteer’, ‘Wouldn’t You Like’, ‘Done For’, and ‘There Are Other Ways’.

‘Puppeteer’ is about how Circe turns all of Odysseus’ crew except for Eurylochus into pigs. ‘Wouldn’t You Like’ is how on his way to confront Circe, Odysseus runs into Hermes who gives him Moly to help him defeat Circe. ‘Done For’ is Circe and Odysseus’ battle song while ‘There Are Other Ways’ is Circe’s attempt to seduce Odysseus after he wins their battle. Out of these four songs, ‘Wouldn’t You Like’ is probably my favourite, closely followed by ‘Done For’. As a Saga, this is probably my favourite out of the ones released so far. You get call backs to one of the very first songs of the musical with the “I’m just a man” refrain in ‘There Are Other Ways’ that appears not just in The Tory Saga but also The Ocean Saga. Another call back is the Penelope motif that has been featured ever since ‘The Horse and the Infant’ and denotes Odysseus’ wife Penelope and his motivation to get back to her after the conclusion of the Trojan War.

So far, there has been no news for when the next saga, The Underworld Saga, will be released. According to Rivera-Herrans’ TikTok, The Underworld Saga will be the final saga for Act 1. I love listening to all four sagas that we’ve currently got and can’t wait for the rest.