GNIT – REVIEW OF 2025 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Gnit is a play by Will Eno that was first produced in 2013. Its production by the Shaw Festival, directed by Artistic Director Tim Carroll, marks the play’s first appearance in Canada. Carroll seems to have a high opinion  of the play and hence its Canadian debut.

The Shaw’s program informs us that the play is based on Henrik Ibsen’ s Peer Gynt.

Upon entering the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, I asked the volunteer welcomer at the door what the word Gnit means. She did not know but told me it is a play about the mind. After being told by Peter Gnit, the main character in the play, that his name is the result of a typo, I figured out that the error resulted in Gynt becoming Gnit. Peter and Peer are obvious.

There are extremely rare occasions when you watch a performance and understand very little, get almost nothing out it and wonder on what criteria the play was selected for production.

Mike Nadajewski as International Man, Qasim Khan as Peter and 

Julia Course as Bartender. Photo by Michael Cooper.

Gnit has six characters and I will set out the names of the actors and the roles they played.

Qasim Khan is the only actor who plays one role, Peter Gnit, and we see him in his youth and later life. He tells us that does not know who he is and we never get a grip of his identity either. In the opening scene we see him with his mother in a dialogue that can come from Samuel Becket or some absurdist play. He decides that he wants to marry a woman that he loves (?) but his mother informs him that she is getting married that day. Peter attends the wedding and elopes with the Bride on that very date. We do not see any of this but we do see the bride a number of times after that without understanding much of anything. That at least looks like a plot. 

Julia Course: she plays six characters. They are Solvay, Bartender, Lady of Interest, Gravedigger, Auctioneer and Gabrielle. I think I recognized most of these characters but shoot me if I can say very much about them.

Nehassaiu deGannes: she played four roles - Mother. Uncle Joe, Beggar and Local Person. Let’s just say my acquaintance with most of them is nebulous.

Patrick Galligan: he played ten roles. Strangers 1 and 3, Moynihan, Voice, Hunter, Robber, Sphinx, Shackleton, Pale Man and Reporter. Nice to have met them but who are they all?

Mike Nadajewski: Town, Green Family, International Man, Begriffin. Come again?

Gabriella Sundar Singh has twelve roles: Stranger 2, Bridesmaid, Bride, Outdoorswoman, Woman in Green, Helen, Case Worker, Anitra, Pastor, Bremer, Anina.

If my counting is correct, the six actors had to represent 37 characters. I tip my hat to them in admiration for being able to do some fast costume changes and represent characters often  for only a minute or so. As I key in the names of the characters from the program, I have no idea who many of them were or what they did for the play.

As for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, no doubt there were people in the audience who know the play well and could relate Gnit to that play. I have seen Peer Gynt twice and have read it, but I could not relate the one play with the other except superficially.

Caroll sets a brisk pace for the almost countless scenes of the play. Some scenes last for less than a minute, I think, and there are others that last minutes. How they are connected escaped me. Once again, I commend the six actors who changed costumes and roles with amazing speed and tremendous acting ability.  

The set design by Hanne Loosen consists  of about a dozen easily moveable boxes and tubes hanging from above. There was a variety of costumes of all descriptions for the 37 characters that passed before our eyes.

I confess that I got nothing out of the play and have no idea what Carroll had in mind when he added the play to this year’s program.
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Gnit by Will Eno will run in repertory until October 4,  2025, at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre as part of the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.  www.shawfest.com.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

WAIT UNTIL DARK – REVIEW OF 2025 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Wait Until Dark is a suspense thriller by Frederick Knott, adapted for the stage by Jeffrey Hatcher. It involves Susan (Sochi Fried), a young, blind woman who lives in a basement apartment in Greenwich Village, New York in 1945. She has a young neighbor called Gloria (Eponine Lee) who lives on the floor above her and her husband Sam (JJ Gerber). The play has three other characters: Mike (Kristopher Bowman), Carlino (Martin Happer) and Roat (Bruce Horak).

The idea of a suspense thriller is just that, suspense, surprise, shock and on-the-edge-of-your-seat anticipation of what might happen next. A revelation in a review of facts about the characters may lead the astute to figuring out the plot  and after that they may want to do to the reviewer what Macbeth did to Duncan. Let’s see how much I can say without revealing anything of substance.

The play takes place over Friday and Saturday afternoon. It is tightly plotted. The basement apartment has two large windows and messages are probably conveyed by opening and closing the blinds, but can we be sure? A dead body is discovered in a closet in the apartment and there is a safe whose contents and combination are unknown. Pretty suspicious, I would say. 

Sochi Fried as Susan, Kristopher Bowman as Mike and 

Martin Happer as Carlino in Wait Until Dark (Shaw Festival, 2025). 

Photo by Michael Cooper.

There are some questions about Susan’s husband and somebody (one, two or all three men) wants to get something from Susan. The deck is loaded and it will take about two hours and twenty minutes to unravel everything. In the meantime, there will be a few scary, shocking and gasping incidents. No facts divulged by me.

Sochi Fried as Susan is intelligent, astute and a potential victim of violence. There are shocking and breath-stopping events that I will tell you nothing about. The three actors do superb work in their roles but I refuse to tell you more than that.    

Bowman, Gerber, Happer and Horak give outstanding performances and i say this without my tongue in my cheek. Eponine Lee as Gloria runs up and down the stairs at great speed and gives a superb performance.

The set by Lorenzo Savoini shows a credible image of a 1940’s basement apartment and the lighting design by Louise Guinand is well done to represent the plot development involving the blind occupant.

The thriller is directed expertly by Sanjay Talwar with a sharp eye on timing and pacing,

For the rest, you will just have to see the play. 
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Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott, adapted for the stage by Jeffrey Hatcher continues at the Festival Theatre until October 5, 2025, as part of the Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

MAJOR BARBARA – REVIEW OF 2025 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake may bear Bernard Shaw’s name but out of the dozen productions this season including the two Holiday offerings only one play is by him. And even that is staged in the small Royal George Theatre which will close for demolition at the end of this year. This is the seventh time that Major Barbara is produced at the Shaw Festival and most of the previous ones (except the 2013 productions) were at the Festival Theatre. The Shaw is not a good place to see a lot of plays by Bernard Shaw.

The current production of Major Barbara directed by Peter Hinton-Davis has some superb acting and imaginative touches that make a visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake exceptionally worthwhile even if you have some complaints about it.

Hinton-Davis sets the play precisely between January 5 and 7, 1906 (a year after it was written) whereas Shaw was content with less exacting timing, The director adds some hymns that were sung with relish by the cast without adding much to the production but the play is about the Salvation Army so there you go.

The first act is set in the library of Lady Britomart Undershaft (Fiona Byrne), the wife of the millionaire arms manufacturer, Andrew Undershaft (Patrick Galligan). Undershaft is an unabashed capitalist who is in the business of providing weapons that kill people to whoever is willing to pay for them. He is separated from his family and does not even recognize his children, son Stephen (Taurian Teelucksingh) and daughters Barbara (Gabriella Sundar Singh) and Sarah (Lindsay Wu).

Our attention is drawn to  Barbara, a major in the Salvation Army whose goal in life is to save people’s souls. Her father believes in providing food, shelter and the amenities of life for workers without worrying about their souls. Barbara and her father reach a climax when the Salvation Army accepts money from him, the purveyor of instruments of war and death. 

André Morin as Adolphus Cusins, Gabriella Sundar Singh

as Barbara Undershaft, Taurian Teelucksingh as 

Stephen Undershaft and Patrick Galligan as Andrew 

Undershaft. Shaw Festival, 2025). Photo by David Cooper

The first act belongs to Fiona Byrne as the imperious, sarcastic and marvelous Lady Britomart. She comes from aristocratic lineage but must rely on her estranged husband for the money required to maintain her lifestyle. Byrne displays strength of character, wit, and intelligence, and dominates the act with a stunning performance.

Galligan keeps his own as does Andre Morin as the classicist Adolphus Cusins but their turn to express the position of their characters will wait until the final act of the play. They do superb work. I had problems with Gabriella Sundar Singh’s portrayal of Major Barbara. She seemed to lack the power to create a convincing and commanding woman. She seemed to disappear in the crowd even when she took the principled decision to leave the Salvation Army when it accepted money from her father. She eventually “sees the light” but I did not feel the strength and conviction of her faith in the Army or her conversion to capitalism.

In the final act all arguments come to a head with Galligan taking control of the situation with conviction and assurance. He gives an outstanding performance. Morin gives a fine performance as a man of strength and ability and gives us a Cusins who can run a large industry even though he is not sure if three-fifths is more than one-half. He is deeply learned man with a command of Ancient Greek and he joined the Salvation Army because he was attracted to Barbara and not out of any religious conviction.

The set by Gillian Gallow is unrealistic featuring a blue background with steps on each side. In the first act the back of the stage features a flowery background with a photograph of half of the face of a woman. The scene changes to the Salvation Army shelter and then to the Undershaft arms factory are achieved economically with minimal fuss and the whole thing works well except for the scene in the factory where Hinton-Davis adds the cacophonous bellowing of a hymn while in the background we hear music from Richard Wagner’s Gotterdammerung.  Very annoying.

Shaw could not be knocked off the soap box once he got on it and it holds true for Major Barbara. But fine acting and directing do the job and we enjoy the arguments and the exceptional production
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Major Barbara by Bernard Shaw continues at the Royal George Theatre as part of The Shaw Festival until October 5. 2025 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press, Toronto

NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 - REVIEW OF 2025 PRODUCTION AT ROYAL ALEXANDRA THEATRE

 Reviewed by James Karas

 Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 closed about a year and a half ago at Crowsnest Theatre, Toronto  but it proved so popular that the Mirvish company has revived it at the Royal Alexandra Theatre for a run to August 25, 2025. Dave Malloy is the composer, librettist and orchestrator as well as a borrower from Tolstoy of a work that has many of the hallmarks of an opera but calling it that may leave a lot of empty seats in the theatre.

The Great Comet, despite its vaunted provenance from War and Peace, involves love stories and complications that require a Family Tree in the program with arrows pointing around eleven photographs of the characters to tell us who is who. The aristocratic Natasha (Hailey Gillis) is engaged to Andrey (Marcus Nance) but falls in love with the playboy Anatole (George Krissa) and plans to elope with him. They are prevented from eloping and depressed Pierre (Evan Buliung) steps in to console Natasha. They both see the Great Comet of 1812 as a sign of good hope but the two and a half hours of the show are over and you will have to read War and Peace for the rest.

In the beginning, Natasha and cousin Sonya (Vanessa Sears) arrive in Moscow to stay with Marya (Louise Pitre), Natasha’s godmother. Marya advises Natasha to visit her future in-laws, Prince Bolkonsky (Marcus Nance again) and his daughter Mary (Heeyun Park). Good reason: they are loaded. Bad result: the Prince is a miserly jerk and the visit is calamitous.  

Hailey Gillis and George Krissa in Natasha, Pierre & 

the Great Comet of 1812. Photo: Dahlia Katz

In the meantime, we need more complications. Anatole and friend Dolokhov (Lawrence Libor) along with Pierre go drinking and meet Helene who happens to be Anatole’s sister and Pierre’s wife. Helene is too chummy with Dolokhov and Pierre  challenges him to a duel. Bang. No one is dead.

We need to unravel things. Elopement thwarted. Natasha takes poison but not enough. Anatole gets his comeuppance and Andrey returns but does not forgive Natasha. She and Pierre see The Great Comet of 1812 and they consider it good news and so do we.

Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 is sung through with a rich variety of songs, recitatives and music styles. Some of the songs have a Russian folk song flavour, sung with vigour and accompanied by accordions.

Director Chris Abraham wants to provide us with a fast moving and boisterous program with rich use of audience participation. Actors run up and down the aisles of the theatre. They interact with audience members, including dancing with them. There are audience members on the stage and the actors encourage and lead the audience in applauding the performance and laughing. There are roving guitar, violin, viola, cello and accordion “players”. They show enthusiasm and create enthusiasm in the audience. Abraham does not want the level of audience involvement and excitement to lag or diminish and all the frantic activity is infectious.

It is one hell of a show. The singing is very good and the ensemble acting is outstanding.

Set Designers Julie Fox and Joshua Quinlan provide a two-story set that wraps around the stage. It suggests opulence without overdoing it. The costumes by Ming Wong suggest aristocratic attire and appear appropriate for the nineteenth century Russian setting.

It is a rousing, rip-roaring show that had the audience in the palm of its hand and was given an enthusiastic standing ovation.
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Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy (composer, librettist and orchestrator and borrower from Tolstoy) in a production by Crow’s Theatre and The Musical Stage Company  continues until August 25, 2025, at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. 260 King St. W. Toronto, Ont. www.mirvish.com

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION – REVIEW OF 2025 LONDON PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession gets a redoubtable production at the Garrick Theatre in London, directed by Dominic Cooke. It boasts the star power of Imelda Staunton as Mrs. Warren and it is a fine reminder what Bernard Shaw could do at his best.

Mrs. Warren’s Profession is in fact Shaw’s third play. He wrote it 1893-94 and published it in 1898 with his first two pieces under the title Plays Unpleasant. Producers treated it like the plague, and it was produced privately in 1902 and promptly banned from public performance. Its first production in the United Sates had the same fate. Its second production in the United States had a worse fate. It was banned and the cast were arrested and charged with “offending public decency.”

What did the play show that offended the delicate sense of decency of late 19^th century Britain and America? Many women at the bottom of the social ladder were paid so poorly that they had to resort to extreme measures to survive. A second job was inevitable and at times the only thing left for some women was to sell their body. The impolite word for that is prostitution.

Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter in Mrs Warren’s Profession. 
Photograph: Johan Persson

Mrs. Warren’s Profession deals with that subject but on such a rarefied level that one hardly recognizes what it is talking about. We first meet Vivie Warren (Bessie Carter). She is an attractive, self-assured woman living in an upper-crust house (we see her in a garden) and enjoying the life of the well-to-do. Mr. Praed (Sid Sagar) a successful architect and gentleman, comes by, looking for Mrs. Warren. So does Sir George Crofts (Roger Glenister), a mature man who is above a gentleman, he is a knight of the realm.

This is high society, and they are friends of Mrs. Warren. Vivie and we slowly become acquainted with Mrs. Warren’s profession. She is the managing director of Private Hotels across Europe. Come again? Well, they are bordellos, or to stoop to unacceptable language for some, they are brothels or whorehouses. Mrs. Warren started at the bottom of that profession and has risen to the top. She did have a child in the process, but we do not know the identity of Vivie’s father. What the women did and why is fine as long as no one mentions it and offends public decency.

We meet the respectable town rector, the Rev. Samuel Garner (Kevin Doyle) and his useless son Frank (Reuben Joseph). The latter is infatuated with Vivie. The reverend is a comic figure and played for laughs, but he does have a secret that solves the infatuation issue and a mystery.

The crux of the play is Mrs. Warren’s defence of her present position in the profession (poverty forced her to practice it when young) and Vivie’s reaction to finding out the source of the money for her lifestyle. Mrs. Warren showed strength and resilience in her ability to rise to the top and is refusing to give it up. Vivie displays revulsion and strength in her refusal to continue living on the avails of her mother’s job.

The other side of Mrs. Warren's Profession. Photo: Johan Persson

Sir George, a man of 60, wants to marry the attractive Vivie and give her a good life without her getting mixed up in the reality of what he does. His offer of marriage is based on “I have money, what more do you want” which Vivie rejects out of hand and proceeds to find a way of supporting herself.

Cooke has made a significant addition to the production: a chorus of ten women dressed in white underclothes, who appear, to change the stage props and walk around as samples of the women who work in the bordellos that Mrs. Warren and Company operate.  

Staunton and Carter give powerful performances as the opposing mother and daughter. Glenister gives a prime example of the apologist for mistreatment of people and the father and son Rev. Samuel and Frank Gardner are comic figures with an extra layer for the reverend who maintained the respectable appearance while partaking of the pleasure provided by the abused women.

Set and Costume designer Chloe Lamford has created an atmosphere of wealth and comfort in sharp contrast to the underlying reality of the play. Brilliant.

Dominic Cooke has directed a stunning production of one of Shaw’s best plays that will not offend anyone’s delicate decency but should point to a reality that has not been entirely eradicated.
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Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw continues until August 16, 2025 at the  Garrick Theatre, 2 Charing Cross Rd, London, WC2H 0HH. https://thegarricktheatre.co.uk/tickets/mrs-warrens-profession/

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

THE DEEP BLUE SEA – REVIEW OF 2025 THEATRE ROYAL HAYMARKET PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play The Deep Blue Sea gets a major revival at the gorgeous Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. It is directed by veteran director Lindsay Posner with set and costume designs by Peter McIntosh. It stars Tamsin Greig as Hester Collyer, Hadley Fraser as Freddie and Nicholas Farrell as Sir William Collyer.

The plot is simple. Hester is found unconscious in her apartment after her landlady smelled gas. She entered the apartment and found an empty bottle of sleeping pills and concluded that Hester had attempted to kill herself. It is true, she did.

The rest of the play attempts to explain the reasons for her attempt. Hester is the daughter of a minister and has some painting talent. She was married to Sir William Collyer, a judge of the High Court whom she left. Farrell gives a fine performance as the decent man who loves his wife but did not and perhaps could not offer her the sexual satisfaction that she needs.

Her way out was a relationship with Freddie, and it is difficult to say anything positive about him. He is an incipient alcoholic, selfish, unemployed, thoughtless and lazy. He may have made an impression as a test pilot at the beginning. He no longer loves her, but he is still good in bed. Fraser is superb as the swaggering, former test pilot who is looking for work when he is no longer capable of doing it. Superb performance.

Scene from The Deep Blue Sea. Photo by Manuel Harlan

Her husband (they are not divorced yet) is a gentleman, successful, thoughtful and generous. We get glimpses of their married life and there is no doubt that for all his sterling qualities Sir William was not a passionate lover. Freddie is and his main attraction is probably his sexual prowess. At its lowest, it seems that Hester leaves her husband for sexual pleasure. The politer version would be love and perhaps at the beginning a more exciting life. All of that is in the past and at present Freddie is a jerk.

His friend Jack Jackson (Marc Elliott) sets an example of living well and being responsible, but that view does not register with Freddie.

Hester’s neighbor Miller (Finbar Lynch) gives an example of decency with a sense of humour. He studied medicine but is no longer permitted to practice. No explanation is  given but his current job as a bookie. He helps Hester medically but when asked if she might do it again, he replies “I am not a prophet. He has an instinctive understanding and empathy for Hester’s condition. Haltingly he tries to give some insight to Hester about her life and life in general and in the end, he appears to have some success. 

I was not entirely satisfied with Tamsin Greig’s performance as Hester. She is a deeply troubled woman who took a brave step in leaving life at the top with a High Court judge and a knight. She fell in love  (give her credit for it) and it was a disastrous decision but she cannot easily extricate herself from it. Greig did not display the strength of character  and at times appeared almost mousy. She is not. Unfortunately, Greig did not define the role of Hester for me and was not a convincing protagonist.

The set by McIntosh consisted of a large but rundown apartment that looked appropriate for a woman in bad financial straits. The rent had not been paid for a month and she was trying to sell some paintings to make ends meet. Freddie offered nothing.

Lindsay Posner is an experienced director and does superb work with the production but he may not have got the best out of Greig in her portrayal of Hester.

There is an autobiographical and mythical angle to the play. The mythological angel that occurs to me is that of Helen of Troy who left her husband King Menelaus to run off with Paris. Was Menelaus a bore in bed? Unlike Hester, Helen went back to her husband and we don’t know how he felt.

The play may hark back to Greek mythology but for Terence Rattigan it had an autobiographical inspiration. The gay playwright was abandoned by his young lover for another man. He could not very well write a play about homosexual love in 1952 but this was his way of expiating a terrible chapter in his life. Menelaus would have understood. 

A very good night at the theatre.

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The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan played at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, 18 Suffolk Street London SW1Y 4HT London, England. www.trh.co.uk

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto.

THE CONSTANT WIFE – REVIEW OF 2025 ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Many people will recall a play by W. Somerset Maugham called The Constant Wife that opened in Ohio in 1926 and has often been  revived. It is a pleasant comedy about a constant and wonderful wife and an equally wonderful husband with one fly in the ointment, as they say. The husband, you see, is having an affair with the best friend of the constant wife. And she finds out and the play is taken up with the unravelling of that indiscretion.

The Royal Shakespeare Company has decided to revise Maugham’s play by having it updated by Laura Wade and providing a version based on the original.

The facts please.

Constance Middleton (Rose Leslie) and her husband John (Luke Norris) have it made. They are happily married, well off (he is a Harley Street $$$$ surgeon) and the sun is shining and all is well. There is the small issue of John’s roving pecker which has found a nest of repose in the arms Marie-Louise (Emma McDonald) who happens to be Constance’s’ best friend.

ROSE LESLIE AS THE CONSTANT WIFE. Photo: Johan Persson 

That’s bad only if “discovered” as they say and if you want a play, it must be discovered. In this case the Christopher Columbuses are Constance’s blabbermouth younger sister Martha (Amy Morgan) and her more discreet mother Mrs. Culver (Kate Burton). And you guessed it, Martha tells Constance that her husband is unfaithful, and Constance does not go to Texas to buy a gun. We are in civilized London after all.

We need a couple more twists for laughter and a plot to entertain us for a couple of hours of crisp dialogue and funny situations.

Fifteen years ago, Constance knew Bernard (Raj Bajaj) who went abroad and is now back and wants to relight the candle that he had for Constance then. He is handsome, rich and has a Saville Row tailor. What more can one ask for?

Marie-Louise’s oafish husband Mortimer (Daniel Millar) found John’s cigarette case under his wife’s pillow, and he is very suspicious about how it got there. So are we, but please, let’s keep it clean. He barges into the well-appointed Middleton home making seditious accusations about a cigarette case under a pillow. The clever Constance explains that it was she who put the cigarette case there and not her husband who should not be smoking at all let alone before or after coitus or in someone else’s bedroom.

You think about that. (I want to know what they were doing at the precise moment that the cigarette case fell under her pillow but as I said we will behave,) In the meantime, we get a crisp, finely paced and acted comedy. Just watch the textbook-perfectly accented butler Bently (Mark Meadows) then enjoy the beautiful performance of the spunky, intelligent Rose Leslie as Constance. We like Emma McDonal for her fine acting but disapprove of her raunchy character. Well, maybe. Bajaj is the perfect gentleman, and the rest of the cast are wonderful actors at light comedy.

Director Tamara Harvey puts everything together from pace to timing to give us a superb light comedy.

One more fact. Mortimer’s unfounded but factually accurate suspicions are assuaged and Marie-Louise’s predisposition to adultery is or will be satisfied by a non-doctor and they will have their fun, and we will enjoy light comedy at its best. I had to tell you that lest you were concerned about the ending.
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The Constant Wife by Laura Wade based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham continues until August 2, 2025 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, England.  https://www.rsc.org.uk/

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Torono

THE ORESTEIA – REVIEW OF 2025 NATIONAL THEATRE OF GREECE PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD

The National Theatre of Greece has staged a production of the three plays, Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and Eumenides that make up Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy in the Theatro Dassous in Thessaloniki.  This is the only extant trilogy from Ancient Greece, and it was played in one evening lasting over three hours without intermission. It is a major theatrical event. The trilogy is rarely performed on the same evening. I saw all three parts in the same theatre in 2019, but they were done over two evenings and were directed by different directors.

Director and dramaturge Theodoros Terzopoulos brings his own take on the great trilogy that inevitably needs adaptations, changes and deletions to make it palatable to modern audiences. We do not know enough about Ancient Greek music and dance to approach the original opera-type production and must rely on modern ideas. Terzopoulos has many of them. 

The Oresteia is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest dramatic works in the west. It tells the story of The House of Atreus, specifically about the return of King Agamemnon of Argus, the victorious commander-in chief of the Greek forces that won the Trojan War and destroyed the city of Troy.

Agamemnon returns to Argos with his trophy, Princess Cassandra, where his bitter wife Clytemnestra slays him. Her son Orestes avenges the killing of his father by killing his mother and her lover Augustus. He is in turn pursued by the avenging Furies and in the last play he ends up in court in Athens where the goddess Athena pardons him and establishes a system of justice for the great city. It is a long and great story that has travelled over thousands of years.

Agamemnon begins memorably with a tired old Watchman (Tasos Dimas) on the roof of the Palace of Argos complaining about his fate and telling us that he is watching for a light signal that is to be sent to Argos from Troy announcing the Greek victory over the Trojans. The light signal is sent from mountain peak to mountain peak across hundreds of kilometers, a feat of imagination and planning if there ever was one. 

A scene of the Chorus in The Oresteia

As the Watchman relates his story in measured emphatic tones, the Chorus of Argives, dressed in black, enters the round playing area of the Theatro Dassous in slow steps, stop and face each other. The lengthy choral episode that follows in the text is eliminated as Clytemnestra (Sophia Hill), the Husband Slayer enters imperiously. She wants us to believe that she is the much-suffering faithful wife and tells us how Agamemnon slew their daughter Iphigenia in order to appease the gods and get a fair wind to sail off to Troy with the Greek forces. Hill plays an unforgettable Clytemnestra.

The Chorus does engage in Dialogue with Clytemnestra, but its use is limited. The Chorus lie or roll on the ground, they engage is some heavy breathing or grunting and perform some arm gestures and movements but there is almost no chanting of the great verses that Aeschylus wrote for them. They do engage in vigorous argument over the guilt of Orestes’ murder of his mother but that is near the end.

Agamemnon (Savvas Stroumpos) and Aegisthus (David Malteze) speak in enunciatory tones but are given a maniacal laugh that I found curious. Why does the commander-in-chief of the Greek forces sound slightly unhinged? And why does his cuckolder Aegisthus sound the same? Otherwise, they give impressive performances. 

The poor Cassandra (Evelyn Assouad), the Trojan princess who is brought by Agamemnon as his concubine, is first shown lying at his feet. He stands on a raised part of the stage announcing his return and she lies on the steps at his feet. During her scene she crawls along the ground and tells us her story very dramatically. A stunning performance by Assouad.

Orestes (Babis Alefantis) is a young man ready to defend his murder of his mother. But the Furies cannot forgive such egregious crimes, and they intend to punish him. The Chorus turns into Furies (Erinyes), gesticulating, falling and rolling on the ground, waving their hair, grunting menacingly and turning into vengeful creatures.

In The Eumenides, the final play of the trilogy, Orestes is brought to trial in Athens before an Athenian citizen (Tasos Dimas) with Apollo (Nikos Dasis) and Athena (Aglaia Pappas). The Ghost of Clytemnestra (Sophia Hill again) appears for the prosecution. As is well known, the end of The Eumenides has a political angle. It was as much a salute to the establishment of a system of justice in Athens as to a winding up of the story of The House of Atreus. The Furies or Erinyes are turned into the kindly Eumenides.

Except for a few characters dressed in white, the costumes are strictly black. My only comment is that Orestes is not part of the Chorus and he should have a costume differentiating him from them.

Terzopoulos makes the ending of his production of The Oresteia into a powerful political statement of his own. When the trilogy finishes, we hear a loud announcement in English: WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD. What follows, still in English, was a recitation of American financial successes such the price index increases of S & P, the New York Stock Exchange and the like. All are intended to be vigorously anti-American. That explained the singing of a song in Arabic during the performance that I did not get.

The audience gave the production a tumultuous round of applause and started chanting. I could not get the words initially, but they soon became clearer. They were all chanting FREE PALESTINE. Terzopoulos was making a no-holds-barred political statement.

The production, however translated and dramaturged by Eleni Varopoulou and the numerous behind-the-scenes artists, represents the vision of The Oresteia of Terzopoulos. It is a coherent vision (politics aside) that may not satisfy everyone in every respect. That is inevitable considering the complexity of the work, the theatre for which it was written two and a half thousand years ago and the twenty-first century.

It is worth mentioning that the production opened in Budapest in May 6, 2025 and then travelled to China, around Greece and it will finish its tour in Aeschylus’s birthplace, Elefsina, in September. That is a total of 12 venues in four months with one or two performances in each theatre.

I saw the performance at the Theatro Dassous in Thessaloniki on July 17, 2025

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James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toromto

THESMOFORIAZUSES - REVIEW OF ARISTOPHANES’ PLAY IN THESSALONIKI

Reviewed by James Karas

THESMOFORIAZUSES- try pronouncing the word or remembering it. It is the title of a raunchy comedy by Aristophanes that was first seen in Ancient Athens in 411 BCE.  Most of his 11 surviving comedies have one-word titles (Birds, Frogs, Clouds, Knights, Peace) but for this one he chose a word that would have been familiar at the time but is a forgettable tongue twister for us. It refers to women who observed the Festiva of Thesmoforia, an annual fertility celebration dedicated to the goddess Demeter, an event for women only.

The women have decided to take action against Euripides, the tragedian, who presents a very negative view of women. He has Medea who kills her children, Phaedra who falsely accuses her stepson Hippolytus of rape and other baddy women. The decision of the women is to kill him.

Euripides (who was very much alive in 411 BCE) gets wind of what the women are up to and decides to take some action. He asks the effeminate tragedian Agathon to dress like a woman, sneak into the Thesmoforia and defend him. Agathon refuses and Euripides is forced to send his elderly relative Mnesilochus to do that.

Mnesilochus is dressed, shaved all over and he joins the women surreptitiously. After some parodies of Euripides by the women, Mnesilochus is caught out and imprisoned by the women.    

Aristophanes was fearlessly gross and the bane of translators who had to keep him clean for school children. The last time I saw the play in Argos it came replete with simulated anal sex, jokes about it, three-foot penises, and bawdy language that would make a sailor blush, to resurrect an old aphorism. To give a small example, at the beginning of the play Euripides asks Mnesilochus if he knows Agathon. He says he has never seen him. Euripides replies that he must have effed him. (Sorry for the elision). Some translators write “you made love to him” which is nonsensical and a long way from what the author wrote.

A view of the theatre but not the production under review.

This production shied away from penises and bawdy language, but it succeeded in being a rousing, energetic and funny take on the play. It used modern dress, sort of, and its language was current Greek as were its references. In a faithful translation you will get references to a named well-known informer, a woman who relived men of their hormonal pressure or a society companion, and numerous informative footnotes that would kill the play.

In this production the jokes are contemporary, there is use of current slang that I did not understand completely, and the production became Aristophanic without being completely faithful to him.

The play was performed in a courtyard of an old Ottoman fortress (The Fortress of Seven Towers) that became a prison that lasted as such until 1989. It was part of the 2025 Eptapyrgio Festival which started 2019.

I have some problems with the programme. It credits quite rightly Evi Sarmi and Eleftheria Tetoula, the directors who do a marvelous job with the vigorous pace and attempt at non-stop  performance. A bit of variation in pace may have helped but that may be just nitpicking. There was musical accompaniment throughout with a band on stage. They played some modern songs and if I may complain, they are a bit too loud, and we did not need to have almost every word by the actors accompanied by background music.

They played in a small theatre and there was no need for microphones but that is what we got. We got the disadvantage of volume and hearing everything through loudspeakers. Unnecessary to say the least.

The program lists seven actors without any indication of what roles they were playing. It does not list the names of the characters either. They name the musicians and the instruments they played as well as the man responsible for the video projections (Vasilis Koukmisis). The videos were projected on the concrete walls of the citadel, and it was difficult to make out what they were showing or what we were supposed to see.

Of the actors, Diogenis Daskalou seems to be the most famous one. He is a prominent standup comic and musician, but he played one of the smallest roles in the play, that of the Scythian Archer, a policeman. Daskalou played it with a thick accent and used humorous slang, but he appears for only a few minutes near the end of the play.

There is a total of seven actors listed in the program, and the others are Dimitra Antonakoudi, Sophia Voulgari, Alexandros Nikolaidis, Kornilia Prokopiou, Giorgos Chiotis and Giorgos Christoforidis. Who played Euripides, Mnesilochus, Agathon, Cristylla, Cleisthenes and the other parts?

Stathis Pachidis is credited with versification of the text and new music for the production. What translation did he use and what versification did he do? A short blurb or an essay would help us enjoy the production more. Sarmi and Tetoula see the serious part of the play and its comments on the place of women then and now. True, but it is a comedy that parodies Euripides and society, but its focus is comic not social criticism.

My griping aside, this was a highly enjoyable production with some easily correctable shortcomings.
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Thesmoforiazuses by Aristophanes played on July 14, 15 and 17 2025 at the Eptapyrgio Festival in Thessaloniki, Greece.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press

LOUISE – REVIEW OF 2025 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Louise is an opera by Gustave Charpentier that has the distinction of being the first opera of the twentieth century or so they tell us. Charpentier (1860-1956) had a long life but wrote only one viable opera. It was successful for a while, but it has fallen out of favour, and one is grateful to the Aix Festival for producing it. 

It is a love story that branches out into family dynamics, social commentary especially about women’s rights and provides a vignette of moral standards of the time.

Louise (Elsa Dreisig) is in love with Julien (Adam Smith), but she is caught in the social mores and family traps of the era and there are few choices for working class girls in late 19^th century France. She wants to start a new life with her lover in Paris, the symbol of freedom, but her parents do not approve of her leaving them. She rebels and does move to Paris. but the breakup with her parents and her choice of work as a seamstress are not completely successful. In the end she does find happiness with her lover and with life in Paris, but she is wracked with guilt about her decision.

In the midst of enjoying the pleasures of freedom, love and parties, her mother (Sophie Koch) shows up and breaks up the party by telling Louise that her father is not well. Louise returns home to the tense and unhappy atmosphere and eventually she finds the strength to break the chains of family pressure and morality of her class and leaves her father and his curses.

Despite its broader tentacles, this is a sappy story, but Charpentier gives us a lot more than that and makes Louise an enjoyable work. He adds a couple of dozen characters from Louise’s place of work and Parisian society and creates a celebration with Louise’s coworkers as well as street parties with a colorful and fascinating cross section of working-class Paris.

It includes a crowd of pleasure seekers, street vendors and a night prowler who calls himself The Pleasure of Paris (played colourfully by Adam Smith). Soon Louise’s co-workers join the festive crowd, and all present a vivid and joyous scene in the opera. In the meantime, Julien is serenading Louise and her co-workers tease and even ridicule her, but in the end the two lovers leave together. 

Scene from Louise, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2025 

Photo: © Monika Rittershaus

The two lovers escape and move into their own apartment and Louise sings the opera’s most famous aria “Depuis le jour” about how wonderful life is, about being in love, about her first kiss, about life in Paris. It is beautifully done by Dreisig.

Nicolas Courjal starts as a tired, and brooding father who adores his daughter but ends up as a nasty man who cannot let his daughter grow up. Sophie Koch starts as a tyrannical mother, overprotective of her daughter but her character matures and, in the end, she ends up breaking away from the patriarchal family. The adoring father does not appear to accept change.

The four singers who handle the immediate family show vocal beauty without being stressed with pyrotechnics. The crowd scenes are handled beautifully, and they provide a much-needed balance to the family squabble and the need for the young lovers to break away from the apron strings of the traditional family of the day and strike a note of freedom and of course give us Paris as a symbol of liberty.

The set by Etienne Pluss consists of the stage of the Théâtre de l’Archevêchê being turned into a large well-appointed room. There are couches lined up at the back with large windows above that. This could be a huge waiting room, and it does not represent the home of Louise’s working-class family. The basic structure serves as the humble apartment of the lovers and her workplace as well as the street party. The windows are shuttered and closed to indicate change of venue, but the changes are subtle, and we prefer to watch the action rather than the set changes.

In the end this production of Louise expertly directed by Christof Loy presents us with a coherent, well-done work that deserves more attention and productions than it is getting. Loy and dramaturg Louis Geisler add a nice touch at the end of the opera. Louise’s mother exits with her when she leaves her family home. The mother has seen the light. The father has not.

Giacomo Sagripanti conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Opera of Lyon in a vivacious performance of a highly enjoyable night at the opera.

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Louise by Gustave Charpentier was performed a total of four times until July 13, 2025, at the Théâtre de l’Archevêchê, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press

THE NINE JEWELLED DEER – REVIEW OF 2025 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Nine Jewelled Deer is the intriguing title of an opera offered by the Aix-en-Provence Festival. It is by Sivan Eldar, Ganavya Doraiswamy and Lauren Groff who are unknown to me, adding mystery to intrigue. It played at Luma Arles for three performances and that required a bus ride from Aix-en-Provence to Arles. It also performed in the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in Aix-en-Provence for an additional three times.

What is it all about? A program note gives us the basic elements of the new work whose premiere we are about to witness. I can do no better than to quote it:

A thousand-year-old cave painting in China depicting a drowning man saved by a marvellous deer whose existence he must not reveal; a cramped kitchen in modern-day India where an old woman takes in victims of life’s misfortunes and heals them through song; the garden of a former prostitute, where a monk teaches the secrets of “Enlightenment” – that supreme state of knowledge and compassion.

The opera is the work of Sivan Eldar, a composer and instrumentalist with broad experience. Her biographical information states that she started as a pianist and vocalist and has broadened her interests into electric and electronic instruments and more. Ganavya Doraiswamy was raised in Tamil Nadu, South India where she learned singing, harmonium and classical Indian dance. She further studied spirituality “with a focus on freeing individuals from power relationships and from identity ascription” according to her bio.

The performers are Ganavya Doraiswamy and Anura Sairam, vocalists, with   Nurit Stark, violaist and violinist, Sonia Wieder-Atherton, cellist, Dana Barak, clarinettist, Hayden Chisolm, saxophonist, Rajna Swaminathan, percussionist and Augustin Muller playing electronic – Ircam.  

Scene from The Nine Jewelled Deer. 

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2025 © Ruth Walz

The performance takes place in a large hall in Arles where seats are installed on one side, and we watch the action on the ground level in front of us. This is not a theatre in a traditional form. The players named above open the show with one of them asking us to sing a one-phrase refrain in Tamil as she sings the song. Most of the audience joins in what sounds like a beautiful, perhaps haunting, prayer or invocation

The names of jewels are projected in English on a screen. DIAMOND, PEARL, SAPHIRE, CORAL, EMERALD etc. with comments about each of them by one of the vocalists but I do not know who. The instrumentalists play music that varies from melodious to dissonant, to jazz and such that I cannot put my finger on all the types that they cover.

The spoken text and the songs are in English or in Tamil. There is one section that lasts for about half an hour where a grandmother tells a story to a young listener and then the listener responds to the story, all in Tamil without surtitles.

The story of the drowning man and the deer that saved his life is told. The writers are careful not to identify the deer as a stag or a doe so as not to appear sexist. The pronoun “it” would serve perfectly without the necessity of any further explanation.

The blurb quoted above contains promises that may all have been broached but I did not get them all and some may have been in Tamil. The saved man keeps his promise to the marvelous deer and did not disclose who saved him from drowning until the King who is trying to find the deer because his Queen wants it, offers a reward including some virgins and the poor saved man breaks his promise and reveals his saviour. The King finds the deer and is about to shoot it with his bow but the arrow melts and the deer is saved.

The show stretches the definition or at least my narrow idea of opera but that is of no importance. New and innovative works are not just desirable but necessary. The Nine Jewelled Deer is based on ancient Indian tales that relate stories of Budha’s previous lives and incarnation. The opera is based on one of the numerous Jataka Tales that are, unfortunately, unfamiliar to me. There are projections of paintings during the performance and unfortunately, I could not understand their meaning.

The production is directed by the wild, wildly imaginative and brilliant Peter Sellars. I do not expect to understand what he is doing on a first (at least) viewing.
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THE NINE JEWELLED DEER by Sivan Eldar, Ganavya Doraiswamy and Lauren Groff, directed by Peter Sellars, visual artist Julie Mehretu played at Luma, Arles and at the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in Aix-en-Provence from July 6 to 14, 2025 as part of the Aix-en-Provence Festival.  

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press

THE STORY OF BILLY BUDD, SAILOR - REVIEW OF 2025 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Billy Budd is a fictitious character created by Herman Melville in an unfinished novella known as Billy Budd, Sailor. It drew much literary attention competing with the author’s much more famous Moby Dick. Benjamin Britten was drawn to the story and composed an opera based on a libretto in four acts by E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier that opened in 1951. It was rewritten as a two-act opera that premiered in 1960.

Like all good stories, Billy Budd is based on a simple story that opens much more when pondered. Billy Budd is a young, innocent, decent and handsome young man who is “impressed” (taken by force) as a sailor on The Indomitable, a warship. He encounters decency and evil, hatred and malice and eventually is convicted and sentenced to death in accordance with articles of war.

Oliver Leith did the musical adaptation. Ted Huffman did the stage direction, adaptation, costume design and accessories. The two have syncopated Britten’s work into a chamber opera that ten singers who perform all the roles play all the instruments in the intimacy of the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in Aix-de-Provence. They deliver a captivating 140 minutes of opera that is emotionally intense and gripping.

The story begins with Captain Edward Fairfax Vere (Christopher Sokolowski who also plays Squeak), a naval officer and man of culture, as an old man recalling the events of his life, struggling with his conscience and remembering the story of Billy Budd. We then go back to 1797 on the deck of The Indomitable where the decent Billy Budd encounters the ship’s Master-at-arms John Claggart (Joshua Bloom who also plays Dansker), an evil man. This is where we go beyond the story of one man but are forced to think about good and evil, justice and injustice and innocence and corruption. 

Scene from The Story of Billy Budd, Sailor. 

Photo: © Jean-Louis Fernandez

Claggart plots to destroy Billy Budd, and he plots against him including attempting to bribe him into starting a mutiny. He brings Budd in front of Vere on trumped up charges and the innocent sailor is so shocked that he cannot utter a word. Billy Budd has a terrible stammer and is unable to speak under pressure. Vere is forced to condemn Budd to death, and he is hanged on the ship’s deck in a terrifically staged scene that that leaves you stunned. 

Baritone Ian Rucker as Billy Budd vocally exudes the innocence, eagerness and humanity of the young sailor. He knows that he is innocent even if in a moment of anger, he struck Claggart who died from the blow. The punishment for striking an officer is death and Billy Budd takes the inevitable punishment with grace. A wonderful performance. 

The venomous Claggart is performed with exceptional malice by bass Joshua Bloom. He struck me as a man with motiveless malignity, a description someone coined about the villainous Iago, Othello’s destroyer.  

Tenor Sokolowski’s Captain Vere presents perhaps the most interesting character because he represents more than just the events of 1797. He straddles the moral code of the warship with the knowledge of later reflection of what he did. Did he lack the moral backbone to refuse to execute an innocent man? Is he trying to salve his conscience in old age? It is a subject for discussion that Sokolowski sings so eminently well in his performance of the role.

The musicians deserve a special bow. Finnegan Downie Dear, conductor and keyboards, Richard Gowers, keyboards, Siwan Rhys, keyboards and George Barton, percussion. They are on stage behind the singers ready to lend a hand, when necessary,
A superb syncopation and presentation of Benjamin Britten’s opera.
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The Story of Billy Budd, Sailor  by Ted Huffman and Oliver Leith after Benjamin Britten played four times until July 10, 2024, on various dates at the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com

 James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press