Euripides’ ‘The Bacchae’ Is Taking Robert Thaler for a ‘Wild Ride’

Robert Thaler has an idea why there are so many unemployed actors: “Unlike other professions, anyone can call themselves an actor. It’s led to a gross oversupply in the market. And it saddens me to see so many talented people fall through the cracks.”

Thaler doesn’t necessarily consider himself one of those, although he’s publicly seeking an agent, and jokes that “after 10 years in this town, I’m soon to be thoroughly unemployed.”

In the meantime, however, the actor is relishing his role as the volatile Pentheus in Ron Sossi’s stylish adaptation of Euripides’ “The Bacchae” at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles.

“It’s not a typical show--it works in bursts of real, dramatic energy,” says Thaler, who also appeared in “A Macbeth” and “East” at the Odyssey. “Euripides writes in bold colors, archetypes. It’s like getting on a very fast-moving train and letting it take you for a wild, wonderful ride. This play has survived 2,400 years--probably because the structure is so crazed, so full of irony.”

The role also allows him to don a wig and play a woman. “It’s a little scratchy on my shoulders,” kids the actor, who appeared on the NBC soap “Santa Barbara” from 1985-88. “But I think it’s becoming. Actually, it’s a lot of fun switching sexes; it provides an opportunity for a performer to get in touch with his sexuality, find out what that’s about.”

The Iowa-born Thaler traces his migration west to “seeing a poster of a naked California girl descending into the Pacific--and I decided that’s where I wanted to be.” With a degree in political science from UC Berkeley, he moved to Los Angeles, and was in the original cast of the stage hit “Tamara.” Thaler already knows what his next stage role should be. “For a year, Patrick Stewart has been threatening to direct me in ‘Hamlet,’ ” he grouses. “Patrick, are you reading this?”