James Karas
Yota Argyropoulou and Michalis
Konstantatos have, in their words, adapted and dramaturged Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts
and presented it at Peiraios 260 Theatre as part of this year’s Athens
Epidaurus Festival. The new play is an extension and expansion of Ibsen’s play and
in the end it is only tangentially related to it.
The adaptation opens on a happy
note. Pastor Manders, Mrs. Helene Alving, her son Oswald and her maid Regina
are opening an orphanage which has been built in honour of her late husband,
Captain Alving. The Captain is praised effusively as a great man, a patriot and
a generous benefactor of the children of the community. This is part of the
plot of Ibsen’s play but in that version the orphanage burns down and is not
insured.
Ibsen’s play is a powerful
condemnation of 19th century morality and hypocrisy as we witness
revelations about the Captain’s true character as a drunken philanderer, Helene’s
unhappy marriage, Oswald’s congenital syphilis and the servant Regina’s
parentage.
All of these facts eventually
come out in the Argyropoulou-Konstantatos adaptation but most of the play is
the representation of a nightmare. I could not always tell whose nightmare it
was. After the interruption of the dedicatory scene, the set consists of a
deserted rocky place. There is extensive use of projected video and the point
of most scenes is not always clear. We see Manders and Helene on the ground
with the beautiful Helene trying to initiate sexual intercourse without getting
any response from him but the scene is done in slow motion as in a dream which
no doubt it is.
Helene meets Regina in a secluded
area, undresses and has Regina undress. She seems sexually attracted to Regina
and there is some physical contact but it falls short of consummation. Helene
knows that Regina is her husband’s daughter.
There is a long scene between
Oswald and Regina and they play a game of “truth or courage” which goes on for
a tiresome and pointless length. I thought Pastor Manders had died but he came
back to do a magic trick. He put Regina in a box and cut her in half in what is
traditionally one of the great magical acts. There were references to Regina
feeling that she had been cut in two and never put together again but did we
really need to illustrate it in a way that has nothing to do with the play? Or
is all fair in dramaturgy and nightmarish adaptation of a great play?
The passage of time is indicated
by Manders and Oswald playing imaginary ping-pong over a period of twenty
years. Is chronology of any consequence in a nightmare?
Konstantatos directs the play,
the Set Designer is Kostas Pappas, the Costume Designer is Angelos Bratis and
the music composer is Giorgos Poulios.
I should mention the actors and
the parts they played but neither blindspot theatre group, the company behind
the production, nor the Athens Epidaurus Festival make that very easy. The two
small Festival programmes, one in English and one in Greek and the large
222-page programme name the cast as Yota Argyropoulou, Pinelopi Tsilika,
Nikolas Papagiannis and Yorgos Frintzilas. No information in the programmes or
on the website about who plays what part.
I guess that Argyropoulou plays
Helene Alving and that leaves Pinelopi Tsilika as Regina. As to who plays what
between Papagiannis and Frintzilas I do not know. Perhaps they can ask the people
who put the programmes together why they can’t be bothered to identify the
actors and the parts that they play. Antonis Myriagos appears in a video and I
assume they means as the ghost of Captain Alving. I have no hesitation in
recognizing the fine acting of the actors even if I can’t be sure of what parts
they played.
_______________________
Ghosts by
Yota Argyropoulou and Michalis Konstantatos based on the play by Henrik Ibsen
played on July 17 -19, 2018 at the Peiraios
260 Theatre, Athens Greece. www.greekfestival.gr
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