James Karas
Hugh Leonard’s Da is a memory play, an elegy, a
lyrical piece about a father-son relationship and in its own way a tribute to
the author’s father.
The play opens with Charlie (Dimitris Siakaras) sitting on the edge of
the stage in front of the curtain waiting for a rehearsal. Some cast members arrive
and the curtain opens on n scene where some people are attending a funeral. We realize
that the funeral is for Charlie’s father the Da (dad) of the title. Bur after
some short dialogue to set the scene, the ghost of Charlie’s father (played by Kostas
Santas) begins to speak. The rest of the play will present scenes from
Charlie’s life as a middle aged writer and as Charlie in his youth played by
Anastasis Roilos.
Maria Chtziioannidou, Dimitris Siskaras, Anastasis Roilos, Nikos Kapelios,
Lilian Palantza, Orestis Chalkias, Kostas Santas, Dimitris Kotzias
This is Charlie’s story but the main character is Da because Charlie
wants to come to terms with his relationship with his father. Da is a
fundamentally decent man who adores his son. Charlie was born illegitimate but
Da adopted him and loved and cared for him for the rest of his life. Da spent
his working life as a gardener for a wealthy woman and had no other ambition.
Drumm, (Dimitris Kotzias) is a high-placed civil servant who acts as a
mentor and father-figure for Charlie. There is a marvelous scene near the
beginning of the play where Da brings Drumm to the house hoping that he will
get Charlie a job. It is during World War II and Da is an enthusiastic
supporter of the Nazis and to Charlie’s immeasurable embarrassment, predicts
their victory. Drumm advises Charlie to get out of Ireland and its great
limitations but gives Charlie a job as a clerk where he stays for years.
The other characters in Charlie’s life are his adoptive mother (played
by Lilian Palantza), his friend Oliver (young Oliver played by Orestis Chalkias
and older Oliver played by Nikos Kapelios) Charlie’s love interest Mary
(Christina-Artemis Papatriantafyllou) and Da’s employer Mrs. Prynne (Maria
Chatziioannidou).
The play is a moving journey into the past and a visit with Charlie’s
ghosts. Santas gives us a highly sympathetic, simple unambitious and
unsophisticated Da. People like that are not the type we ususally meet in drama
but Leonard has written such a character and Santas is superb in his acting of
him.
Siakaras as the middle-aged Charlie is a man who needs to come to terms
with his past and his relationship with his loving and decent father and a
world from which escaped with great difficulty. Siakaras and Chalkias carry us
along the journey with high-caliber acting.
Kostas Santas
Kotzias is good as the upper crust Drumm and Papatriantafyllou is
attractive as the low-class Mary.
Dimosthenis Papadopoulos translated, directed and dramaturged the play
making some changes at the beginning and the end and making Leonard’s text a
play-within-a-play. The acting is good and cohesive but Papadopoulos did have
to deal with the insoluble problem of putting on a production in translation.
We do not get the lilit and musicality of the Irish accents nor the social
structure indicated by them. The production provides the English text of the
play in surtitles.
Papadopoulos and Set Designer Stavros Litinas move away from any hint of
Irish by having the play done on an empty stage with a view of the sky in the
background. There are a few seats at the back where the actors sit when they
are not part of the actions. It is probably a good compromise (and much
cheaper) from trying to create realistic Irish backgrounds.
Papadopoulos has made the play his own within the obvious and
insurmountable limitations of producing an Irish play in Greek. The result is
quite intriguing and noteworthy.
____________
Da by Hugh Leonard opened
on January 27, 2018 and continues at the Theatre of the Society for Macedonian
Studies, 2 Ethnikis Amynis, Thessaloniki, Greece, www.ntng.gr
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