TOSCA – 1978 MET PRODUCTION STREAMING AND MUCH MORE

Reviewed by James Karas 

Have you heard or seen Tosca recently? How many times? Have you heard Maria Callas in her 1953 recording?

New York’s Metropolitan Opera offered us another chance to see Tosca by streaming its 1978 production. It is part of its daily streaming of productions new and old during the pandemic. It is a redoubtable show by any standard, but you may wish to complain about the pre-digital age video. You should not.

Tosca requires three topnotch singers: a soprano, a tenor and a baritone. With some exaggeration one can state that almost every topnotch soprano, tenor and baritone has recorded Tosca, many more than once, but more about that later.

Maria Callas

The production streamed for us featured Shirley Verrett as Tosca, Luciano Pavarotti as Cavaradossi and Cornell MacNeil as Scarpia. That is star power. Verrett started as a mezzo but had the high notes to sing soprano roles and she does a stunning Tosca. She has a richly toned voice and dramatic talent, and her Tosca has grand emotional depth and strength. She is coy and jealous in the beginning but progresses into a woman who is deeply in love in the duet with Cavaradossi. Her “Vissi d’arte” is almost a prayer and we relish her murder of Scarpia as she glorifies in her stabbing and cries “Muori donato! Muori, Muori!”

Luciano Pavarotti, who dominated the tenor repertoire, made his Met debut in the role of the heroic Cavaradossi. He sings with ease and assurance and his splendid middle range is a delight while the high notes seem to come effortlessly. Much younger then, he is physically adroit and gives us a memorable Cavaradossi.

Cornell MacNeil was one of the foremost baritones of the era and interestingly was directed by another outstanding Scarpia – Tito Gobbi. Gobbi sang Scarpia in perhaps the greatest recording of Tosca, the one with Maria Callas in 1953. MacNeil as Scarpia is made to look like Gobbi did in the role especially in the 1964 production at Covent Garden. That production, with Maria Callas of course, was directed by Franco Zeffirelli part of it is available on YouTube.

Gobbi’s adept production is Zeffirellian in its approach. He wants us to see details of the church in the first act and the room in the Palazzo Farnese in the second act as well as a giving us a good impression of the Castel Sant’ Angelo in the third act.

Zeffirelli produced his version of Tosca at the Met in 1985 and it was revived numerous times for the next 25 years. It starred Hildegard Behrens, Placido Domingo and Cornell MacNeill. It is lavish, opulent, stunning, vocally and physically. Enough said. Just see it.

Zeffirelli’s unforgettable production was replaced by Luc Bondy’s staging in 2009 and it was roundly booed. In 2017 Bondy’s production was replaced by one directed by David McVicar. The latter avoided Bondy’s pitfalls and gave a traditional production laden with many fine details that made it look fresh. It was a success.

Opera listeners come in several categories. Normal people who see and listen to standard repertory productions. They come in various gradations of dedication to the art. In the other extreme are the opera buffs or aficionados. There dedication has no bounds – they are nuts – who want every recording of their favourite opera or singer and argue about her high notes, his wobbly low notes and everything in between.

If you see one production of, say, Tosca, you want to see a couple more, no? Yes. But which one do you choose? In 1978, a critic reviewed recordings of Tosca and listed a mere 24 complete recordings starting in 1920. That is a pittance, and most aficionados would have had no difficulty acquiring most of them. Digital recordings, videos and streaming arrive, and the number of recordings goes through the roof. It seems that there are more than 250 recordings of Tosca today. Trying hearing, seeing or buying most of them!

But mention Tosca and all afficionados will immediately point to the 1953 Callas, Gobbi and Giuseppe di Stefano recording. It is spectacular in every aspect and listening to the enhanced CD has the advantage of letting you imagine the action. As I said almost every soprano has recorded Tosca and you will not go wrong with Leontyne Price, Renata Tebaldi, Montserrat Caballe and many others. But like a Muslim going to Mecca, you cannot go though life by not hearing that recording.

There is no shortage of Tosca recordings available on DVDs and on YouTube. In 1976 Gianfranco de Bosio made a notable film with Raina Kabaivanska, Placido Domingo and Sherril Milnes in the main roles. It has the advantages of a movie without interfering with the music or the libretto We see the exteriors and interior of Sant’ Andrea Della Valle Church, get a view of the Palazzo Farnese as well as the Castel Sant’ Angelo. The great scenes are a bonus to the stunning performances of the young singers. A couple of hours well spent.

But things do not always work out. If you want to see the “big names” together in a production that stinks, see Tosca in the 2000 production at the Teatro dell’ Opera di Roma. The stage looks like something you find in a high school auditorium. It has no real orchestra pit and the musicians are encroaching on the playing area which is tiny. The set is pathetic, what you can see of it when the camera is not relentlessly zeroing in on the faces of the singers.

 It was the 100^th anniversary of the opera and Franco Zeffirelli directed it. He did not have much to work with and crammed whatever he could on the tiny stage. Venezuelan soprano Ines Salazar as Tosca sang forcefully and well but she looked like she just stepped out of the shower and had no time to do her hair. Luciano Pavarotti sang Cavaradossi and wowed the audience. They gave him thunderous applause and Juan Pons was Scarpa. Fine singing but simply awful production values.

Covid-19 is making life hell but a few hours with Tosca, Maria Callas and a few others like her and life will seem a lot better.

____________________________

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press. This review appeared first in the newspaper

A FOREIGN COUNTRY – REVIEW OF NOVEL ABOUT GREEK IMMIGRANTS IN CANADA

A FOREIGN COUNTRY  
by Fotios Sarris
Dumagrad Books, Toronto
416 pages, $19.95
ISBN 978-1-988887-05-0.

Reviewed by James Karas

There are several hundred thousand Canadians of Greek descent in Canada made up mostly of those who were born in Greece and came to Canada after World War II and their offspring. One source states that there were 300 Greeks in Canada in 1900 and that there are about 350,000 of us today.

They have done well but a shelf that I have tried to fill with books written by them in Canada is relatively small. Wikipedia lists only four Greek-Canadian Authors. They are Pan Bouyoucas, Tess Fragoulis, Thomas King and Dimitrios Roussopoulos. There are many more. Tess Fragoulis, in her Musings: An Anthology of Greek-Canadian Literature, includes samples of the writing of a dozen authors. There are others that I may not have heard of to my great shame.

 A Foreign Country, a first novel by Fotios Sarris, takes its position as an addition to that short list and as a major literary achievement on its own. The narrator is Alex Doukas, a 45-year old Montrealer running a pool hall that he inherited from his father in Mile End, a poor area of Montreal where immigrants from Greece settled in the 1950’s.

But the novel tells much more than the story of one family. It tells the history of an entire community of Greeks and by extension the story of Greeks from Pythagoras to the present. It is a story and a world that most immigrants and their children will recognize because to a startling extent it represents their personal experiences. It feels like you are reading your biography.

Andreas Doukas emigrates from a village near Thessaloniki, Greece in the 1950’s and starts working in a restaurant. A friend suggests that he marry his sister who works as a maid in Greece. She comes to Canada, they marry and have a son, Alex or Alexander.

Andreas and his wife are ill-suited for each other and there is a huge gap between father(s) and son(s). What is true of Mr. and Mrs. Doukas and their son holds true for a huge number of immigrants and their children. The fathers want to retain their Greekness as they brought it with them. Their children speak Greek badly and there is a chasm between the two generations much bigger, it seems, than that experienced by the Anglos who raise their offspring. Appearances may be deceiving.

Alex’s father runs a pool hall with fellow immigrants as his customers. The father wants to keep the old: the son wants to bring in the new. The fathers want to fight and argue about the politics of Greece; the sons are not interested in them. The fathers keep the Greek flag and the star of Vergina, the eternal Macedonian issue. They are furious at Canada’s recognition of the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name. The sons do not care about the issue and want to move forward.

The novel is a biography of every Greek immigrant to Canada. The unifying themes of the German occupation, especially the famine, the Civil War and all the traditions and rituals of patriotism, religion and history are embedded in everyone’s soul. But that does not hold true for their children. More often than not they consider themselves Canadian.

The patriotism of Andreas and his friends knows no bounds. When Greeks invented civilization the rest of humanity was in the trees. The common patriotic thread runs from time immemorial – Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato - to the present.

Alex is named Alexander after his grandfather but also after Alexander the Great. He is a Canadian and cannot quite fathom the patriotism of his father’s generation. It is another running thread that almost every child of immigrants can relate to.

It is that shock of recognition that made a big impression on me. It is what we say depends on our age. That is the biography of all of us that Sarris gives us.

Sarris has a marvelous comic sense and the section about child rearing is hilarious. The facts of life are simple. People get married and a child starts growing in the mother’s stomach. When the time comes, she is cut open with a knife and the baby comes out. His mother told him that her stomach was cut open and he was born. Alex is sure of that and nothing will dissuade him.

His friend tells him that girls do not have penises; they have holes. The mother has an egg in there, and the father covers it with cream and the baby is created. It comes out of the mother’s hole! No way says Alex. He sees a picture of a naked woman and there is no way a baby could come out of that small hole.

The only way to raise a Greek child is by the mother devoting all her life and love to him and force feeding him. Forget spurious arguments like a child will let you know when he is hungry. You do not have to force feed him? Nonsense. If you do not force feed him, he will die.  There can be very few if any Greeks who cannot relate to this attitude.

There are funny, moving and marvelous incidents while Alex is growing up. He meets with bullies and unpleasantness. He discovers books and Jews through Philip Roth and Mordecai Richler. The latter lived in St. Urbain, the same neighborhood that Alex is living in. It is an astonishing discovery.   

We go through his descent into what he tells us at the beginning of the book about himself:   At the beginning of the novel our hero or anti-hero is running a pool hall. He meets some old acquaintances who are successful. One of them is making films. Another one is a Lecturer, Media Communication Arts at a university and a writer.  Chronologically it is the end of Alex’s story and he will take stock of his life for the rest of the book. At 45 Alex feels that he has ruined his life completely, that he is a fraud and a failure waiting for his life to start. Maybe he has found peace between his ambitions and his limitations, but we doubt it and that is the end of his story in any event.

We go back and read Alex’s life story. In Toronto while studying for a PH.D. he has a tempestuous relationship with a medical student named Laura. He assaults her viciously and almost kills her. He returns to Montreal to visit his father to whom he has not spoken to for two years. He has had a heart attack and a stroke, but the visit ends up with Alex and hurling obscenities at him.

He tries to be a good son of a doting and perhaps over-protective Greek mother. He takes her to church every Sunday and lives with her as long as possible. He lies to her as he lies to just about everyone. In the end he tries to break away from her and reaches the apogee of moral criminality. He strikes her and as she is on the floor imploring him not to leave her, he spits on her. That is a despicable act in any culture, but it is far more pronounced in Greece. Nicholas Gage in Eleni, a paean to his mother who died so he can live, describes his attempts to find the “judge” who was responsible for her torture and murder during the Greek Civil War. Gage searches for the murderer intending to kill him him. He eventually finds him asleep in a chair. He is ready to kill him but realizes that killing him would be a denial of all that his mother stood for. He decides to deliver the ultimate insult: he spits on him. Alex’s mother is found a couple of days later dead, lying in her vomit and urine.

His murderous assault on Laura, the ultimate moral crime against his mother and his contemptuous treatment of his father should bring the ultimate feeling of guilt and remorse. It does not.  He is worried about about being arrested for his assault on Laura and about what his uncle knows about the death of his mother. 

His father is an adulterer, and a liar. He has fathered a child by another woman and he separates from Alex’s mother. There is an unsurmountable gap between father and son that will resonate with most Canadians perhaps regardless of their origin. It may be the tragedy of many immigrants and non-immigrants. 

A Foreign Country is probably autobiographical to some extent. Like Alex, Sarris has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Unlike his fictional character, Sarris is a communications instructor at Ryerson University.    

Sarris writes writes in a literate style and uses many Greek words. They reflect the speech of the immigrants who are speaking Greek. He explains most of them and also translates what was said in Greek word for word rather than put an approximate English translation. If you disagree and show your disapproval of what someone is saying, in Greek you say kolokithia (pumpkins). Sarris has the speaker say “pumpkins” which means nothing in English but in Greek could mean nonsense or bullshit. Non-Greek speakers may not enjoy all of his use of Greek, but it is an added pleasure for those who can.

In his rich and marvelous prose, he refers to a broad range of writers from Homer to T.S. Eliot, to Noam Chomsky, Nabokov, Chekhov, Freud and others.

In the end, Sarris gives us a a cool, sometimes hard, often ironic and humorous view of immigrants and the children. He eschews, thankfully, giving us a heroic tale of “my son the professional” by writes about a deeply flawed human being who may or may not find his moral compass.

 

PAUSE – REVIEW OF TONIA MISHIALI’S FILM AT EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL

Reviewed by James Karas 

Director Tonia Mishiali’s Pause is the second Greek-language movie streamed by the 2020 European Union Film Festival. It Cyprus’s contribution the the Festival.

Pause is a sensitive, moving and almost relentless study of a woman at the end of her rope. We meet Elpida (Stella Fyrogeni) in a doctor’s office with her legs up on stirrups   being examined. The doctor (Marios Ioannou) recites some of the symptoms of menopause some of which are memory lapses, mood disorders, vaginal dryness, loss of sexual desire and perhaps some others. Elpida may be too young for menopause and the movie indicates that if she has any of these ailments they are not from menopause.

Elpida is disheveled, her hair is a mess, she wears no makeup and her face expresses misery, anxiety, pain, hopelessness and the image of a woman on the verge.

Stella Fyrogeni in the doctor's office

Mishiali takes us through Elpida’s ordinary, daily routines, such as shopping at the supermarket, cooking, doing laundry and looking after her husband Costas (Andreas Vasileiou.). We get a closeup of her existence with him who is an ape and that may be an insult to those fine mammals. We usually see him eating or more accurately stuffing his face, snoring and being a jerk. He speaks very little and the only time he shows any affection is when he addresses his parrot.

Elpida wants to colour her hair, get a computer or have money for gas. The answers to all these requests are negative and insulting. He even sells her jalopy of a car leaving her with no choice but to walk everywhere including the supermarket.

Elpida seeks an escape from the prison. She finds a “lover,” a house painter named Andrey (Andrey Pilipenko). She takes up some painting and attempts to run away. She gets dressed up, packs a suitcase and confidently walks away. But she returns. When Costas becomes unbearably obnoxious, she tosses a plate of food in his face. She goes out with her friend Eleftheria (Popi Avraam) and has fun at a disco.

The issue here is which, if any, of these events are real as opposed to illusions borne out of her desperation?

Mishiali gives us some hints but mostly she wants us to figure things out for ourselves. The day after she meets the painter, she finds a hickey on her neck and covers it up with makeup. We can assume that Andrey did it. But there is a subsequent car trip with him, and we may be certain that she is just imagining it?

For her outing to the disco with the appropriately named Eleftheria, Elpida puts on makeup, they drink and sing and find a few moments of happiness. Reality or illusion?

Mishiali in her expert directing provides few exterior scenes and the background is frequently blurry. There is no sense of location in the film except for the interior of Elpida’s mind. That is the only scene that counts. Her condition deteriorates throughout the 96 minutes of the film with the possible exception of the respite provided by her imagination or the reality of her relationship with the painter and her friend Eleftheria.

Eleftheria by contrast is vivacious, outgoing and a woman with guts. She prayed for her husband’s penis to dry up and for him to die. And guess what? Her prayers were answered, she tells us with glee. Elpida’s facial expression conveys the utter misery of a woman, of all women, trapped in hellish marriages. There are escape hatches and we watch as Elpida tries to find one for herself. In the end she leaves us with an extended gale of mysterious laughter.  

Mishiali, who also wrote the screenplay, wants us to see the physically and emotionally cramped apartment, the blurry surrounding world and the expression on Elpida’s face and soul. It is a masterful approach which evokes a superb performance from Fyrogeni and the supporting cast.

_____________

Pause, written and directed by Tonia Mishiali, was streamed on November 19 and 20, 2020 as part of the European Union Film Festival. For more information see: www.euffto.com

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press. This review appeared first in the newspaper

DEFUNCT – REVIEW OF MAVROEIDIS’ FILM AT EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL

 Reviewed by James Karas

The European Union Film Festival is an annual event in Toronto featuring, as its name indicates movies from EU member countries. The 2020 Festival had to take account of the pandemic and it has smartly gone online by streaming 27 films across Canada. Greece is represented by Defunct, a film by Zacharias Mavroeidis and Cyprus by Pause, a film written and directed by Tonia Mishiali. Like all EUFF films, they are shown in the original language with English subtitles.

Defunct (Ο Απόστρατος) is set in the Athens suburb of Papagou and is centered on the life of Aris. He is a young man with serious financial problems who has dreams of making it. He returns to his grandfather’s vacant house in Papagou from the upscale area of Glyfada and runs a “big business” of importing expresso machines from Italy. He has traveled widely and may settle somewhere, maybe Paris or London. All of this is illusion or poppycock as he tries to sell a single expresso machine or make a big sale to the army.

Michalis Sarantis and Thanasis Papageorgiou 

Mavroeidis’s script includes several plotlines and examines themes of love, friendship, honor, loyalty and betrayal. Aris’s story takes place in 2012 but the plot takes us back to the Greek resistance in World War II, the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) and subsequent events.

The other main character of the film is someone we never see. It is Aristides, Aris’s grandfather, who was an army officer and had a good friend, Vassos (Thanasis Papageorgiou). Vassos and Aristides were close friends since childhood, but their relationship became complex during the war.

Mavroeidis reveals the complexity of the relationship of the two friends but does not take sides and leaves us to decide about what is the truth and who is telling the truth. Aristides rose only to major and was forced into retirement early. His family believes it was Vassos’s fault. Vassos was accused of being a leftist and Aristides was ordered to arrest him and deliver him to the authorities. Vassos spent years in prison islands. Thirty years later, Aristides bought a house for him near his own. Why? Was the major fearful of blackmail or was he repenting for what he did to his friend during the Civil War?

Mavroeidis reveals the relationship between Vassos and Aristides slowly and tantalizingly. There is also a stunning revelation that does not answer the riddle of the friendship bur revealing it would be a serious spoiler.

Aris played by Michalis Sarantis goes on a journey of discovery about himself, his “friends” and his ambitions. More importantly he travels back into family history and lore. He lies to himself and to others as he tries to extricate himself financially and from his grandfather’s possible moral culpability. His parents have their own version of the truth as does Vassos. It’s all opaque and very intriguing.

Michalis Sarantos as Aris looks lost. He is a man in search of solutions to his personal problems and issues from the past. His understated performance is well-modulated and superb.

Thanasis Papageorgiou as Vassos appears like an old man who suffered a great deal because of his political views. Even in the 21^st century he is a socially unacceptable pariah. He is social dirt. We see him as a man of decency, but we cannot be sure. A fine performance.

In the end the plot strands are left hanging because Mavroeidis want us to choose, for ourselves, if we must. One of the final scenes is a dramatic shot of Mount Olympus as Vassos is driven by Aris to his village.

The film is shot in Major Aristides’s house and around Papagou. In the old, rundown house, we see a carved wooden chair in front of well-stocked bookshelves. This was Aristides’ office, and it represents him as a meticulous man of learning and authority. But that may be just as much illusion as reality. We see a ceremonial officer’s sword hanging on a wall several times. Will someone use it? Again, Mavroeidis teases us with its mysterious presence.

 The scenes around Papagou are of a pleasant suburb. It was in fact built by Field Marshal Alexandros Papagou for army officers in the 1950’s when he was Prime Minister of Greece. An ideal location for the film.

The film’s title in Greek is O Apostratos (Ο Απόστρατος) meaning a retired officer or perhaps a forcefully retired officer. You may stretch it to mean a useless man or a defunct man. There are numerous clubs in Greece for retired officers and they can hardly be taken to refer to themselves as defunct. Calling the film Defunct may be another example of Mavroeidis being opaque about his work.

_____________

Defunct, written and directed by Zacharias Mavroeidis, was streamed on November 14 and 15, 2020 as part of the European Union Film Festival. For more information see: www.euffto.com

 James Karas is the Senior Editor – Culture of The Greek Press. This review appears in the newspaper.

LIFE WILL SMILE – REVIEW OF STUNNING FILM ABOUT THE JEWS OF ZAKYNTHOS

 Reviewed by James Karas

Before World War II, there were 77,377 Jews in Greece living in 25 communities across the country. At the end of the war there were 10,226 left, 86% of them having been exterminated by the Nazis. The percentage of losses from each community ranges from 99% of the Jews of Xanthi and Serres to 26% in Volos.

But there is one incredible exception: the island of Zakynthos had 275 Jews living in harmony with the Christian population. Not one of them was captured or killed by the Nazis. 

The astonishing story of their survival is told in Life Will Smile – The Holocaust in Greece and the 275 Jews of Zakynthos, a 38-minute film directed by Dery Cleanthous and produced by Steven Priovolos and streamed by the 2020 Toronto Jewish Film Festival on October 27 and 28, 2020.

Photo courtesy of The Toronto Jewish Film Festival. 

The story of the Jewish community of Zakynthos is told by Haim Konstantini who was born there in 1933. He was 83 when he narrated the film. He tells us of an almost idyllic life on the island with Jews and Christians living in harmony. But we are also informed of the murderous progress of the Nazis starting in February 1933, a month after Haim was born. We see film clips and still pictures of the the Nazis, the crematoriums, the murdered remains of people and the extermination camps that defy belief in their horror and bestiality.

After the benign occupation by the Italians, the Germans arrived and, Haim tells us, World War II began for the islanders. Hunger, mistreatment and deprivations followed. The hunt for Jews began and the mayor of the capital city, Loukas Kerreri and Archbishop Chrysostomos were summoned by Nazi officers demanding a list of all the Jews and their property.

The mayor and the bishop returned the next day and gave the officer the names of all the Jews on the island. The list had two names on it: Kerreri and Chrysostomos! We are the only Jews on the island, they said. How can there be no Jews here when there is a synagogue? demanded in effect the officer. We are all Christians, he was told.

The mayor and the bishop warned the Jews and told them to scatter in the villages around the island. Some of them hid under gravestones in a cemetery and eventually all found hospitality in the houses of Christians. Not one Christian betrayed the Jews and not a single Jew was found.

The mayor and the bishop escaped but they were found. They were tortured but did not disclose anything. The mayor’s wife was pregnant at the time and Haim movingly admits that he would not have had the courage to do what the mayor had done in similar circumstances.

Some of the incidents are dramatized and there are some beautiful shots of the island. It is an outstanding and thoroughly moving story of humanity and heroism in the face of the greatest crime in history. The lives of 275 people may appear insignificant in the face of the extermination of six million, but a tiny example of decency is extremely significant in the expanse of cruelty that the imagination could devise and evil perpetrate.

Fittingly Mayor Loukas Kerreri and Bishop Chrysostomos are recognized as Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance Centre in Israel. for their bravery.

 P.S. The film states that 77% of the Jews of Greece were exterminated. According to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs the number is 86%.

______

For tickets and more information visit: https://tjff.com/films/life-will-smile/

James Karas is the Senior Editor – Culture of The Greek Press. This review appears in newspaper as well.

PERSIANS - REVIEW OF STREAMED PRODUCTION FROM EPIDAURUS

James Karas

The National Theatre of Greece has scored a coup by streaming Aeschylus’s Persians directly from the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus. This the first time that this has been done and the laudable production deserves to be followed with more opportunities for people around the world to see ancient and modern Greek drama.

Persians has many aspects that are unique to the play and it presents almost insurmountable obstacles for a modern director and actors as well as for the audience. It is the earliest extant play from the handful of works of Ancient Greek drama that have survived. It was produced in 472 B.C. and deals with a historical event, the defeat of the Persians at the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C., a battle in which Aeschylus took part. Most other plays dealt with mythical subjects.

At its simplest, the plot deals with Persian elders (the Chorus) and Queen Atossa, the wife of the dead King Darius, learning from a Messenger of the colossal defeat of their great army. Xerxes had amassed a colossal force to subjugate the Greek city states and Athens in particular. It was a commensurately colossal defeat for the Persians and a victory for civilization.

Lydia Koniordou as Atossa. Photo: Marialena Anastasiadou

The Ghost of Darius also appears in the play as well as the dishevelled and desperately defeated Xerxes.

Dimitris Lignadis, the Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Greece, directs the production and is the one who must find a way of presenting a play to a modern audience even though we know very little about how it was done twenty-five hundred years ago.

The Chorus plays a key part in the play and it is the hardest aspect to deal with. We know that in Ancient Greece they spoke (through the Chorus Leader or in unison), chanted, sang and danced. In Lignadis’s production, they do all of those things to some extent. They wear white shirts with Greek writing on them (I could not figure out what) and skirts. They used long sticks resembling spears for some of their movements. Choreographer Konstantinos Rigos has created simple but effective movements for them with music by Giorgos Poulios.   

Aeschylus used various meters for the Chorus which are impossible to reproduce for us and it is one of the losses that we must accept. We are treated to the recitation of a few lines in the original Greek which resonated with the modern audience and evoked applause. 

The Chorus. Photo: Marialena Anastasiadou

Queen Atossa is the main person in the play as the grand widow of Darius. Lydia Koniordou, dressed in a black gown, evokes shock, grief and fundamental tragedy as she realizes the extent of the Persian defeat and its meaning as the end of an empire and her world. A bravura performance by a great classical actress.

The Ghost of Darius comes from the underworld to witness the effect of hubris and the resulting Persian catastrophe. He (Aeschylus, of course) warns against overweening arrogance and cautions the victorious Athenians as much as he mourns the fate of his empire. A superb performance by Nikos Karathanos.  

Argyris Pandazaras has the tough and thankless job of the Messenger who must disclose in great detail the awful result of the great expedition.

Argyris Xafis gives a fine performance as the blood-spattered and utterly humiliated Xerxes who appears at the end of the play.

As I said it is a laudable production, but it was not without glitches. There were problems with the audio which was interrupted a number of times. I am not certain, but it looked as if the actors’ spoken lines were pre-recorded and it was impossible to synchronize the lip-movements with what we heard. These are technical problems that may well be fixed if there will be futures transmissions.

Transmission of theatre and opera performances from numerous venues have become the norm. Let’s hope that Greece will pick up the habit and make Greek drama, both ancient and modern, more familiar to all of us.

____________________

Persians by Aeschylus in a translation by Theodoros Stephanopoulos was performed on July 24, 25 and 26, 2020 at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, Greece.  It was streamed live on July 26, 2020 and is now touring around Greece. For more information visit:   www.greekfestival.gr

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press.
This review will appear in the newspaper.

SHAKESPEARE FIGHTS COVID-19 TWELFTH NIGHT FROM THE NATIONAL THEATRE

Reviewed by James Karas

The National Theatre is doing its bit to help us survive the covid-19 pandemic by enlisting Shakespeare and broadcasting some of its productions on YouTube. On Shakespeare’s birthday, we were treated to its 2017 production of Twelfth Night directed by Simon Godwin.

As with most productions of Shakespeare, the question in what does (or can) the director and the designer bring to a play that is familiar and is available in the theatre, on film or DVD to be seen numerous times.

Godwin and Designer Soutra Gilmour put their own imprimatur on the production and, not surprisingly, push the boundaries with the intent to surprise, fascinate and entertain. In the usual course of subjective reactions, I give some credit and raise some eyebrows at the result.

It is done in modern dress with a generous portion of modern music. The set consists of two staircases that meet at the apex. They are set on a revolving stage and are used frequently.

Gender switches are almost de rigueur and Godwin partakes of the trend generously. Malvolio becomes Malvolia (Tamsin Greig), Fabian is Fabia (Imogen Doel) and Feste is played by Doon Mackichan.  No issue with any of those changes and they are all done well.

Godwin is faithful to the text with the insignificant changes of pronouns where necessary but he wants modern intonations and the creation of energy. Phoebe Fox as Olivia is aggressive to the point of appearing to be overacting. When Cesario drops by she does a lot more than try to persuade him that she has fallen in love with him. She strips to a bathing suit and enters a hot tub. She pulls Cesario in the water as she makes it perfectly clear that, to put it indelicately, she has the hots for him.

Malvolia is in love with Olivia and he aspires to have her. Does Malvolia harbour same-sex feelings for her? Of course she does and if there is any doubt the answer lies in the final scene when Malvolia threatens to get even with the pack of her abusers and takes off her wig revealing or confirming that she is a lesbian. Greig gives a superb performance as she shows her ambition to rise above Olivia’s servants and her brother Sir Toby.

Sea Captain Antonio (Adam Best), may harbour homosexual feelings towards his friend Sebastian but he is a minor character and the relationship is only hinted at.

The gulling of Malvolia is never pleasant to watch but Godwin has her blindfolded and tied up and her treatment is especially cruel. There is no way of making that scene acceptable.

We have the hilarious scene where Sebastian (Daniel Ezra), mistaken by Sir Toby (Tim McMullan) and Sir Andrew (Daniel Rigby) for the cowardly Cesario, attack him. He gives far more than he gets and Olivia comes out screaming at the attackers. But the scene in Shakespeare’s text takes place in front of Olivia’s house. In this production the incident takes place in the Elephant pub. What are Toby and Andrew doing there and how is Olivia able to jump in and stop the fight? A stretcher too far.

Tamara Lawrence is an excellent Viola/Cesario as is Oliver Chris as Orsino. I enjoyed Phoebe’s spunk as Olivia and Mackichan is a highly enjoyable Feste. The acting of all is to the National Theatre standard which is indeed high.

The sets place the action basically nowhere. Going up a staircase does not locate the action anywhere. The attention to the text is admirable. Godwin makes sure that all lines are delivered carefully and clearly. A pleasure to the ear.

     

Twelfth Night like all plays is set in a world that had a different ethos. The closet homosexuality, the gender swaps and characterization details are in the hands and imagination of the director. But imposing current morality and standards on characters that are rooted in another world I find incongruous and unsettling. What they do in the play belongs to the era when they presumably existed and having Orsino drive up to Olivia’s door does not add anything to a great play.

In addition to Shakespeare, the national Theatre has enlisted other allies in its fight of covid-19 and you can get the details here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/