HIPPOLYTUS – REVIEW OF 2023 PRODUCTION AT THE IRENE PAPAS THEATRE, ATHENS

Reviewed by James Karas

The National Theatre of Greece has staged an audacious production of Euripides’ Hippolytus at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus and subsequently took it on tour across Greece, I caught a performance at the Irene Papas Theatre in the School of the National Theatre, in Athens.

The production is directed by Katerina Evangelatos who also adapted and dramaturged the play. In other words, it represents forcefully her view of the play. The production presents Aphrodite, the goddess of sexuality and beauty, as a vengeful tart who is present on stage and on a video projection almost throughout the performance.

Artemis, the goddess of chastity and hunting, is worshipped by Hippolytus, the bastard son of Theseus and the queen of the Amazons. He considers her the best of the gods. Aphrodite thinks that Hippolytus considers her the worst of the gods and he shuns sex and marriage. She intends to punish him for his beliefs.

The method of punishment that she chooses is to have his stepmother Phaedra become sexually infatuated with  Hippolytus to the point that she will do anything to have coitus with him. Phaedra is a decent woman and she resists the temptation but she may be considered a tool of Aphrodite and attempts to seduce Hippolytus. He rejects her and she commits suicide after leaving a letter for her husband Theseus accusing Hippolytus of attempting to rape her. That’s the story in a nutshell.

Aphrodite on the stage and her eyes on the video screen

The play opens with Aphrodite’s soliloquy about who she is and what she intends to do to Hippolytus. Evangelatos focuses her production on Aphrodite. Elena Topalidou, dressed in a blonde wig, short skirt and zebra boots, opens the production looking sleazy. Evangelatos has placed a large screen at the back of the playing area that she uses for closeups of the actors. The first close ups are of the eyes of Topalidou, then her legs and the rest of her. This Aphrodite looks cunning and evil but more like a teenager than a goddess. She reaches the apogee of her juvenile nastiness when she hears of Hippolytus’s death and starts romping around the stage in a dance of delight. As I said, she is on stage virtually all the time, lurking from behind some bushes and always making her presence known.

Phaedra in the hands Kora Karvouni is a beautiful, decent woman who is overtaken by an uncontrollable sexual passion for her stepson. She discloses her passion to the Nurse (Maria Skoula), makes an attempt on Hippolytus and is too disgraced to continue living. Does she write a letter with lies to Theseus (he is away when all this is happening) on her own volition or under the influence of Aphrodite?

A distraught Theseus pulling his son out of the water

Orestis Chalkias  as Hippolytus is an intense young man, a puritan and in his own words a misogynist. He would prefer a world made up of men only. He is an extremist and although we admire his repugnance at having sex with his stepmother and his fidelity to his father, we have issues with him too. Is he making his own decisions or is he under the undue influence of Artemis? The goddess of chastity and hunting (she did other things too) was once seen bathing with her nymphs by the hunter Actaeon. She turned him into a stag and he was torn apart by his own dogs.   

Artemis appears near the end of the play, a deus ex machina, played by the same actress and wearing the same costume as Aphrodite, except for a set of large stag horns on her head. She does not offer any help to the dying Hippolytus or to Theseus but does offer a cult in the name of Hippolytus. Euripides creates a huge dilemma about the conduct of the goddesses and the behaviour of the mortals and allows us to decide on who is right and who is wrong. Evangelatos seems to present a vengeful, evil and horrible Aphrodite but she does not leave Artemis in a much better position by explicitly having her played by the same actress, in the same costume.

Yiannis Tsortekis give a stellar performance as the authoritarian and misled Theseus who finally realizes the monstrous results of his conduct in cursing his son and then seeing his blood-soaked body at the point of death.

Maria Skoula does superb work as the Nurse and Dimitris Papanikolaou as the Messenger delivers the horrible news of Hippolytus’s fate.

A happy Aphrodite watches Theseus with his dying son.

The Chorus of Hippolytus is described as the women of Trozen (or Troezen, modern day Trizina), or the married women of Trozen. Evangelatos adds a Chorus of male hunters and one matter that has gained attention is the fact that they all appear naked near the end of the play. The National Theatre recommends this production for ages fifteen and over. Euripides’ odes are drastically cut but the performance of the Chorus is still effective.

The play was performed at the National Theatre of Greece School of Athens where the courtyard is called the Irene Papas Theatre. The outdoor theatre consists of scaffolding with seating for (my guess) no more than three hundred people. The set by Eva Manidaki has, as I mentioned, a large screen, bushes on the perimeter and a pond where we will see Phaedra’s very dramatic drowning and where Hippolytus’ bloodied body will be placed after he has been trampled by his horses. The costumes by Eva Goulakou are modern dress.

It is a well-acted and thought-out production that deserves the highest praise.

______________________  

Hippolytus by Euripides, translated by Kostas Topouzis opened on July 7 at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus and played at the School of Athens Irene Papas Theatre and other venues.  For more information:

https://www.n-t.gr/en/events/hippolytos/.  For photos and videos: https://www.n-t.gr/en/events/hippolytos#p1-40

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

 

THE GAMBLERS – REVIEW OF 2023 PRODUCTION AT THE KIPOTHEATRO IN PAPAGOU-CHOLARGOS, ATHENS

Reviewed by James Karas 

Nikolai Gogol was a prolific writer, but he finished only three plays. In the West, he is best known for the many incarnations of The Government Inspector, but his other two plays Marriage and The Gamblers are seen infrequently. I was delighted to have a chance to see a production of The Gamblers at the Kipotheatro (Garden Theatre) of the municipality of Papagou-Cholargos, in suburban Athens.

The production is sponsored by the municipality and the play is translated, adapted, and directed by Giorgos Koutlis.

The Gamblers has some colourful characters and a funny plot. Ikharev (Vasilis Mougaliotis), a gambler and master card handler has won the enormous sum of 80,000 rubles by gambling. He stops in a town inn and meets two other sharks, Colonel Krugel (Alexandros Christianopoulos) and Stepan (Giannis Niarros). They decide to team up and bilk Glov (Themis Panou), a rich landowner of 200,000 rubles that he is readying for the marriage of his daughter. They cannot convince him to gamble but his apparently dim son Alexander (Ilias Moulas) is convinced to gamble and he loses 200,000 rubles. But there is a small problem - he does not have the money. But he does give them a promissory note.

The hoped-for duoe (in red) and the cheating masters (dupes?) of The Gamblers  

The three crooks are in a quandary between immediate needs (money) and future expectations.(more money from the promissory note later). Krugel and Stepan agree to sign the note over to Ikharev and in return he will give the two his 80,000. The plot gets complicated and very interesting from then on as true identities are revealed and who cheated whom is discovered only at the end of the play and it is fascinating. Gogol provides some marvelous plot twists.

The production is all Koutlis and he has chosen a style and method of acting for the cast that raises eyebrows. There is some hilarious comedy, especially when Moulas is on stage. He wears red shorts and appears dim-witted as the son of the wealthy landowner and is very funny. He can bring the house down by trying to sit back on a stool. He does not fall off but teeters on the verge of falling and maintains the posture with hilarious results. He produces a gun at one point, again with very funny outcomes. Koutlis deserves credit for choreographing Moulas’s performance as something highly entertaining. Unfortunately, it is the exception.

For the rest of the performances Koutlis chooses overacting, overdoing and undercutting any humorous possibility. The three gamblers yell through their mikes and the humour never comes out. I don’t think I heard more than a twitter of laughter in the first hour of the production. Koutlis believes in fast-forward motion as if this were a video. A card game begins and the actors move as if they are performing under a gun, flailing their arms, contorting their bodies and engaging in a lot of needless activity. It was not funny.

Koutlis has a band on stage with a percussionist (I could not find his name anywhere) a guitar player (played by Giorgos Tzavaras who also plays Alexei, the inn’s servant.) The band frequently plays background music during the dialogue. It was annoying and unnecessary. When a character says a good line, the drummer gives a brief drumroll. It is like the musicians on a late-night talk show hitting the drums when the star says something funny. In The Gamblers it did not work.

There was a  microphone stand centerstage with a microphone on it, of course, and it was frequently used as if were watching a rock concert. It was part of the frenetic pace that Koutlis was trying to create and maintain to questionable effect. There was some audience interaction with the actors and that proved to be funny.

The costumes by Ioanna Tzami were modern non-descript except for Alexander’s outfit and Alexei’s. Tzavaras  wears a woman servant’s apron and I am not sure if we are to take him as a man or a woman. There is no need to worry about him as Tzavaras did a good job in that role as well as a secondary part that I will not disclose.

The production could have worked much better with less effort. Much of the frantic overacting could have been reduced to better effect. At times the actors looked robotic and left the audience cold.

______________________  

The Gamblers by Nikolai Gogol in a version translated and adapted by Giorgos Koutlis was performed on July 19 and 20, 2023 at Kipotheatro (Garden Theatre), at Papagou-Cholargos, Athens as part of the Municipal Papagou-Cholargou Festival.  https://festival.dpapxol.gov.gr/

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

 

OEDIPUS TYRANNOS – REVIEW OF 2023 PRODUCTION AT THEATRO DASSOUS IN SALONICA

Reviewed by James Karas

Greece is going through the worst heatwave and fires in its history, but theatrical productions continue across the country. The system of professional companies travelling across the country provides many people away from the large centres with opportunities to see productions that they may not have been able to see otherwise.

The epicenters of theatre may be Epidaurus and Athens, but smaller theaters and cities are not left salivating over fine productions. Oedipus Tyrannos, in a production by the National Theatre of Northern Greece and Theatrical Events Iasmos, directed by Simos Kakalas opened at the Theatro Dassous (Forest Theatre) in Thessaloniki for two performances on July 12 and 13, 2023 and will tour around Greece. It will be performed at Epidaurus on August 25 and 26, 2023.

How does Kakalas deal with one of the most famous and by all descriptions greatest tragedies in world theatre? He brings his own vision, of course. The cast wears specially constructed masks throughout and the putting on and removing the mask serves as a change of character. He makes extensive use of the Chorus of Theban Elders speaking in unison doing away with most of the chanting or the use of the Leader as spokesman.

Yiannis Stankoglou as Oedipus

The performance opens with violinist and composer Fotis Siotas playing some dissonant music, some of the dissonance caused more by the loudspeakers of the theatre than by the musician. We hear him play several times during the performance. Thirteen actors in black suits enter and perform some dance steps. Twelve of them form the Chorus of Theban Elders but the entire cast of the play is also part of the chorus.  

This is the full cast of the play: Yiannis Stankoglou, Marilita Lampropoulou, Yiannis Dalianis, Christos Malakis, Giorgos Amoutzas, Konstantinos Moraitis, Markos Gettos, Panagos Ioakeim, Simos Kakalas, Apostolos Kamitsakis, Augustinos Koumoulos, George Loxas, Pavlos Pavlidis. Note that Kakalas, the director, is one of the members of the Chorus.

Wearing sculpted masks developed by Martha Fokas they will form a part of the Chorus, but individual members remove the mask and play other characters in the play. It is a fascinating approach by Kakalas who has the Chorus speak in unison throughout and chant recitative style some choral passages. The accepted tradition is that the Chorus danced and sang or chanted the odes while the Leader of the Chorus spoke.

The Chorus in Oedipus Tyrannos

Oedipus dominates the opening scene as Yiannis Stankoglou in the name role appears before the Elders. He is confident, concerned, sympathetic, powerful and in control of the situation. Every inch a king. But there is a serious problem. The city has been struck by a plague and the reason for it must be discovered and a remedy found.

A member of the Chorus (Christos Malakis) steps out, removes his mask and becomes the old, wise Teiresias. John Dalianis does the same and assumes the role of Creon. He is Jocasta’s brother and has been sent to the oracle at Delphi to discover the reason for the plague in Thebes. (We meet Creon in Antigone, the next chapter in the story of the Royal House of Thebes as a dictatorial successor to Oedipus).

As the plot unravels, we discover that Oedipus unknowingly murdered his father and then married his mother Jocasta. Marilita Lampropoulou steps away from the Chorus and removes her mask to appear as Jocasta, wearing a skirt. She gives an outstanding performance as a woman who married her husband’s murderer and had two children by him.

Giorgos Amoutzas steps out from the Chorus and becomes a messenger while Konstantinos Moraitis does the same and assumes the role of the Herald who has the heavy task of informing the people of Thebes about Jocasta’s fate and Oedipus’s self-punishment. Outstanding dramatic narratives. 

The set by Yiannis Katranitsas consists of a raised, rectangular platform, open on the side of the audience. It is functional and, one may add, easily transportable. With the number of one or two performances in theatres around Greece, one can’t imagine a much bigger set. He also designed simple black outfits for the cast.

As a footnote I add that the performance was scheduled to begin at 9:00. The line up on top of the hill to get in the theatre was huge. Someone asked for a toilet and was told there was none. For half a euro you could get a styrofoam cushion to sit on the concrete steps. We were finally funneled into the large amphitheater and the performance started not quite on schedule. To add to the annoyance, there was no program available. The theatre was almost full.  

Just to give you a rough idea of the travelling company, the cast will perform in Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Kalamata, Patra, Kavala, Andros etc.

 ______________________  

Oedipus Tyrannos by Sophocles, translated by Giorgos Blanas, in a production by Theatrical Events Iasmos and the National Theatre of Northen Greece was performed on July 12 and 13, 2023 at the Theatro Dassous (Forest Theatre) Thessaloniki, Greece and will be performed in numerous venues throughout the summer.  https://www.ntng.gr/

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

DREAM – A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM – REVIEW OF 2023 PRODUCTION AT KYVERNEIO COURTYARD IN THESSALONIKI

 Reviewed by James Karas

Dream is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that is now playing in a makeshift theatre in the courtyard of a small palace in Kalamaria in the outskirts of Thessaloniki. The adaptation by Froso Lytra makes serious cuts and changes to Shakespeare’s text, cutting it down to about 75 minutes. Lytra also directs and the result has many virtues but also some issues.

The reduced length cuts out some scenes as one would expect. The play finishes when Oberon and Titania are reconciled, and we hear a few bars from Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.

The most interesting change made by Lytra is her treatment of the artisans. These are the working-class people of Athens who rehearse and put on a show for the marriage celebration of Theseus and Hippolyta. Lytra changes the artisans to stagehands working for the National Theatre of Northen Greece (NTNG) with the company’s logo inscribed on their t-shirts. Instead of rehearsing the skit of Pyramus and Thisbe as in Shakespeare, they mimic and parody the performances of previous scenes.

In the opening scene Egeus appears before Theseus objecting to his daughter Hermia’s love for Lysander while he wants her to marry Demetrius. Helena is in love with Demetrius.

The two couples go to the forest outside of Athens for the rest of the play. But the NTNG stagehands, all men except one, parody the scene to good effect. They do the same for several scenes, argue among themselves and one of them, Dimitris, is turned into a donkey with whom Titania falls in love. All well done but we do miss the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe, the “play” that they perform at wedding celebrations that usually brings the house down.

The courtyard of the Palataki

Aside from cutting scenes out Lytra syncopates scenes by having two separate scenes in the text played at the same time. This happens in the argument between Hermia and Helena and Demetrius and Lysander. The scenes, the poetry and the acting are beautiful as Shakespeare wrote them and did not gain anything by modification.

The lovers, Eleni Yianoussi as Hermia, Anna Efthimiou as Helena, Nikos Tsoleridis as Demetrius and Yiannis Syrios as Lysander, did excellent work, especially during the lovers’ quarrels.

Grigoris Papadopoulos doubled as Theseus and Oberon and Maria Solomou played both Titania and Hippolyta with regal effect as the Greeks and with silliness as the faeries. Lytra has added a second Puck (Ioanna Demertzidou and Alexandros Zafeiriadis) and I am not sure to what effect. Neither of them is an ethereal figure who flies from one problem to the next. She has also added the boy (Polydoros Lapidakis), the one over which Oberon and Titania fight, a lithe dancer who can do everything that Puck does. Presumably he can dance superbly but cannot act as well.

The "artisans" or stagehands.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream has 23 characters and Lytra uses only 14 actors and three dancers and that is quite commendable in an adaptation.

Having said that there are a few issues with the production. The “theatre” is the courtyard of a building called Palataki (little palace) or Kyvernio (government house). It was built in the 1950s for official use and was later given to the Greek royal family who used it for exactly one night. The building is presently abandoned but its courtyard is used for theatrical productions and concerts.

There is a large space in front of the building followed by some steps and another open area below the stairs. There are make-shift seats on three sides of the playing area holding, I guess, several hundred people. There are floodlights at ground level surrounding the playing area and that is the problem for the spectators on the sides. The lights shine in your eyes making it difficult to see the actors, especially when they are playing at the bottom of the steps.

All the actors are miked, and all voices come from speakers on each side of the stage. Frequently the only way you can identify the speaker was by watching whose lips are moving.     

Lytra has a good idea to shorten A Midsummer and to change the artisans. It would be almost impossible to translate their occupations and their actions in their play for their king. But she needs better facilities so we can follow what is happening.

______________________  

Dream, a version of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Froso Lytra in a production by the National Theatre of Northern Greece and the naan Theatre Group continues until July 23, 2023 at the Kyverneio (Palataki) courtyard, Kalamaria, Thessaloniki, Greece.  www.ntng.gr/

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

THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS – REVIEW OF 2023 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Faggots And Their Friends Between Revolutions is a new opera with music by Philip Venables and a libretto by Ted Huffman. “New” in this case is precise. It received its premiere on June 29 at the Manchester International Festival and then it opened at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France on July 7, 2023, for only three performances.

It is about gay rights, of course, but I am not sure about the political correctness of the use of the word faggots. That and many other words that may be considered unacceptable by some are used in the opera and the source is no doubt the novel on which it is based.

The Faggots And Their Friends Between Revolutions is a novel written by Larry Mitchell and illustrated by Ned Asta. Published in 1977, it is about gay rights and consists of one-page vignettes of gay life. It is based on the experiences of Mitchell and Asta and is one of the earlier books about gay rights. The book was all but forgotten until the fiftieth anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York where there were serious clashes between police and homosexuals.

The opera is staged in the Pavillon Noir, a large, dark, empty space where the actor/singers perform a largely narrative story with music and songs about gay rights. There are no named characters, and the 15 performers tell us the story of life in the mythical Empire of Ramrod. It is in decline and the gays recall the bad days of life as homosexuals. The empire is ruled by men and the gay men or faggots as they refer to themselves live separately in their own community.

Homosexuals form a broad spectrum in our community from faggots (gay men) to faeries, drag queens and lesbians. And that does not account for all the people represented by the letters LGBTQS+. “It’s been a long time and we are still not free” is the refrain that we hear about the lives of faggots. They describe and celebrate their cohesiveness as they decry the hatreds that they encounter even among themselves at times. They speak of “the ritual of brief encounters in the night” where they meet, have quick sex and say nothing. 

THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS. 

Photo from the Manchester International Festival 2023 © Tristram Kenton

The opera uses a variety of musical styles including Hydenesque music. The musicians are on stage, and they change instruments as they need them. We see a variety of instruments from baroque to today including accordions and a harpsichord. 

The program provides a good summary of what we see, and I do not hesitate to quote it. It states that the production is a fantastic parable hiding a political manifesto, a radical vision of the evolution of the world through a queer lens: Faggots draws a revolutionary counter-utopia for all the oppressed, against a patriarchal model that is on its way out. From this colourful, amusingly irreverent work, full of joyful madness, Philip Venables and Ted Huffman have worked together once again … to create a playful, madcap and profound patchwork somewhere between an opera and a cabaret revue. The fifteen performers are in turn singers, actors, and instrumentalists. And they remind us that, yes, pleasure is on the side of the good.  

THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS. 

Photo from the Manchester International Festival 2023 © Tristram Kenton

I want to take a bow to the performers. They do not represent named characters but they act, sing, dance, or play instruments in outbursts of activity that is amazing for the energy that they create or in more sedate sections describing the life of homosexuals. They are: Yshani Perinpanayagam, Kerry Bursey, Jacob Garside, Katherine Goforth, Kit Green, Conor Gricmanis, Deepa Johnny, Mariamielle Lamagat, Eric Lamb, Themba Mvula, Meriel Price, Collin Shay, Joy Smith, Sally Swanson, and Yandass.

Ted Huffman has written the text and directs the performance. Yshani Perinpanayagam is in charge of musical direction with Theo Clinkard responsible for choreography and costume design. Set design is by Rosie Elnile. Lighting design is by Bertrand Couderc and Sound design is by Simon Hendry.

The Faggots is another example of cooperation by a breathtaking number of organizations in the production of a one-act opera. The production is by Factory International for the Manchester International Festival and is a coproduction of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Bregenzer festspiel, the Southbank Centre, London and the NYU Skirball in association with the Holland Festival.

______________

The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions by Philip Venables (music) and Ted Huffman (text) adapted from the novel by Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta was performed on July 7, 8 and 9, 2023 at the Pavillon Noir, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com/

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

PICTURE A DAY LIKE THIS - REVIEW OF 2023 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Picture A Day Like This is a one-act opera that had its premiere at the cozy Theatre du jeu de paume as part of the Aix-En-Provence Festival. It is the work of Martin Crimp a man of the theatre who wrote the libretto and George Benjamin a man of music who composed the score.

The opera has a simple and appealing story. An ordinary woman, wearing a very ordinary dress steps out and tells the audience in English that “no sooner had my child started to speak whole sentences than he had died.” It is a startling opening before we have heard a single note of music. It is a shocking personal tragedy, and the woman cannot accept her child’s death. Flowers and crops grow from the cold earth, why can her child not be revived? 

She is told that if she can find a happy person before nightfall and get a button from his sleeve her child will return to life. She sets out in search a happy person and sees a couple of lovers in the rapture of lovemaking, and she surmises that they must be truly happy people. She asks for a button, but the lovers soon start arguing about his numerous affairs, including with some of her friends. They are not happy.

She then meets an Artisan (John Brancy), a collector and a man who seems to have everything including loads of buttons. But as she speaks with him, the artisan appears not to be all there and as the scene continues, she realizes that the man is unhinged. Not an acceptable source for a button as a token of happiness.

 The Woman and the Lovers. Photo: Jean-Louis Fernandez

She then meets a Composer, sung by Anna Prohaska (and here George Benjamin may be pulling our leg a bit) who is rushing to go into rehearsal of his new opera. She tries to explain to him the urgency of her state, but the composer is not impressed with her. His work is more important than her fate or her situation is not what it seems. No button.

The Woman reaches the pint of despair and in a powerful aria “Dead stems of flowers come to life again” she grieves that nothing has worked in her quest for a happy person.

Her penultimate encounter is with the Collector (John Brancy), a man who has everything in the world except a woman. He promises to give the Woman all that a person could want. She turns him down, but he is sufficiently moved to open a door that leads into a garden where the Woman meets the beautiful Zabelle who is sympathetic but also aloof. The Woman wants to share Zabelle’s happiness, but she is refused. Zabelle tells the Woman her story and disappears. The Woman ends up with a button in her hand, but I will not disclose the details of the end of the opera.

The Woman ins despair. Photo: Jean-Louis Fernandez

The Woman is sung by French mezzo soprano Marianna Crebassa in fine voice able to express the unbearable pain of a mother who has lost a child and the passionate hope of finding a way of bringing her child back to life. We hear the beauty of her voice and the pain and hope as she searches for a happy person.

Norwegian soprano Beate Mordal sings the role of Lover 1 whom we see in the midst of passionate lovemaking with Lover 2 that turns into an unpleasant argument, and she is the also Composer. 

Canadian countertenor Cameron Shahbazi sings the passionate and then angry Lover 2 and the Composer’s assistant. As Lover 2 he is a serial philanderer who has sex with men and women, including a friend of Lover 1. What is worse, he reaches out to the Woman for sex and Lover 1 tells him to take his polyamory and go to hell. They are not happy.  

The interesting roles of Artisan and Collector are done by American baritone John Brancy. With a coat over his shoulders and a three-peace suit he is every inch the patrician but not quite all there mentally.

Anglo-Austrian soprano Anna Prohaska sings the role of the mysterious Zabelle. She is a woman of poise and mystery with a lovely voice that leaves us with a mysterious conclusion to the opera.

Benjamin has composed some marvelous music reflecting the Woman’s emotional stages in her search for a happy person and the music reflects her encounters. It is sometimes lyrical, sometimes dissonant. Benjamin conducts the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma have teamed up as directors, set designers, lighting designers and dramaturgs of the production, and earned high marks. The gray set consisted of revolving and reflecting panels that are appropriate for the themes of the opera.

This is no small composition of a one-act opera. It was commissioned and produced by Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Opera national du Rhin, the Opera Comique, Les Theatre de la Ville de Luxembourg, Oper Koln and Teatro di San Carlo. With that many organizations able to cooperate, there is hope for opera and civilization.

__________

Picture A Day Like This by George Benjamin (music) and Martin Crimp (libretto) opened on July 5 and will be performed a total of nine times until July 23, 2023 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.

WOZZECK - REVIEW OF 2023 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is a complex opera based on a simple story. The Aix-en-Provence Festival assigned its productions to two masters of their genre, Simon Rattle to conduct and Simon McBurney to direct. The result is an astounding and thrilling performance at the Grande Theatre in Aix.

McBurney and Set Designer Miriam Buether have created a dark, bleak, dystopic world that Wozzeck and the other characters inhabit. There are large scale video clips, all in black and white, some showing details of Wozzeck or of the crowds. Wozzeck’s milieu looks unhinged the way he is or will certainly become. There are almost no realistic tableaux or scenes in which the opera is divided.

The opera usually begins with the poor soldier Wozzeck (Christian Gerhahera) shaving his obnoxious army Captain (Peter Hoare) who is reproaching him about his lack of morals especially his fathering a child out of wedlock. Wozzeck replies that it is difficult to be virtuous when one is poor.

This production does away with the shaving scene by placing Wozzeck on the parade ground with other soldiers and the Captain and a youngster in uniform poke him and insult him. Wozzeck has no choice but to endure it. The scene is vintage black and white with video projections of Wozzeck.

In the second scene Wozzeck and his friend Andres (Robert Lewis) are seen chopping firewood in an unrealistic forest and Wozzeck thinks the place is cursed and starts seeing things. We start to realize that Wozzeck may not be well.

                                                        Photo: Monika Rittershaus 

Wozzeck’s house where we find Marie (Malin Bystrom), his mistress and the mother of his son, in the third scene, consists of a door in the centre of a revolving stage. It is indicative of the unrealistic and very sparse set. This is the story of a poor man beset by everything in a strange world.

The development of Wozzeck’s story continues with his encounter with his Doktor (Brindley Sheratt), an arrogant quack, appropriately nicknamed “coffin-nail” who experiments on Wozzeck.

The major attack on the hapless Wozzeck comes from Marie’s brazen infidelity with the dashing Drum Major (Thomas Blondelle). He is proud of his conquest. Wozzeck is beaten up by him when he tries to confront him and in the ultimate insult, Marie tells him that she would prefer a knife in her back to being touched by Wozzeck.

Photo: Monika Rittershaus 

In the end she does get a knife and in a supremely dramatic and brilliantly staged scene Wozzeck is eventually drowned. It is an astonishing bit of staging as he appears to be fighting the water’s depth and the orchestra plays the music of his tragic end as he drowns. Unforgettable.

Bystrom sings and acts splendidly as Marie, a woman caught in a loveless marriage who loves her child but also loves the Drum Major. She has regrets about her behaviour and seeks solace and perhaps forgiveness for her sins by reading the Bible. This gives her some moral ambivalence without erasing her conduct.

Peter Horne as the Captain and Sharett as the Doktor are typical arrogant creeps who think nothing of mistreating their inferiors. Blondelle is superb as the swaggering Drum Major who gives in to the invitation of adultery by Marie and then brags about his conquest.   

Simon Rattle conducts the London Symphony Orchestra through the complicated, indeed tortuous music with the assurance of a master. We never forget the music that accompanies and accentuates every step of Wozzeck’s life as we watch the descent of our anti-hero mentally and physically.

A stunning production.  

__________

Wozzeck by Alban Berg opened on July 7 and will be performed a total of five times until July 21, 2023, at the Grand Theatre de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com

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

COSI FAN TUTTE - REVIEW OF 2023 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

If you are going to the opera and notice that what you are about to see is directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, tighten up your seatbelt because you may be in for a rough ride. The rough ride could be thrilling or whatever the opposite of thrilling is that will cause you to boo, metaphors aside, the production that you actually see.

I speak of the current production of Cosi Fan Tutte at the former residence of the Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence, now called the Theatre de l’Archevêché.  Cosi was the first opera to be produced at the Aix-en-Provence Festival when it opened in 1948 and there can be few people who attended that performance and attend this year’s showing but sometimes historic nostalgia is as important as actual memory.

As to the plot of Cosi, we all know that with some variations we have the beautiful sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella who, with their maid the feisty Despina, live in a mansion in Naples overlooking the harbour.

They are deeply, madly, eternally in love with Guglielmo and Ferrando and we know that because they tell us that it is the absolute truth. The latter gentlemen feel exactly the same way about the ladies, and they are willing to put their lives or whatever to dispel any doubts about their devotion. But their friend, the cynical and wise philosopher Don Alfonso (I think that’s what he is) is willing to make a bet that all women are capable of infidelity and that is confirmed by the title of the opera.

Wanna bet? Yes, they do. Don Alfonso “sends” the men to war, and the same men disguised as Albanians are brought to the ladies’ posh residence by him. The ladies do not recognize the newcomers who woo them with passion and conviction. My impression has always been that the two beauties are very nice but not very swift. Leave to Mozart’s music to overwhelm you and suspend your disbelief.

 

The two couples near their beds. Photo Monika Ritterhaus

What does Tcherniakov give us. Forget most of the above. Two middle-aged couples are, in Tcherniakov’s words, “in a fancy villa in the forest or perhaps a chalet in the mountains.” The set shows a sitting area with an ordinary table and six chairs with two inviting bedrooms with big beds behind but let’s not quibble about that.

The two couples make use of the bedrooms during the overture and when the opera begins, we discover that they are Guglielmo and Fiordiligi, and Ferrando and Dorabella with Don Alfonso and Despina. We already saw Don Alfonso molesting, yes, sexually interfering with Despina’s anatomy, but she seemed to participate in the encounter after some resistance. We will see more of Don Alfonso as a dirty old man.

But right now, our attention is riveted toward the lovers who are past the bloom of youth and are in fact in their fifties. I take the liberty of assuming that whatever they were doing on those beautiful beds was not for the first time.     

The holiday in the forest or in the mountains takes place now and the men and women are dressed in modern clothes so there is no eighteenth or nineteenth century prudery. Guglielmo and Ferrando as the presumed Albanians of the original production appear in modern clothes with masks which they quickly take off and even Mozart’s gorgeous music is asking too much of us to suspend our disbelief. Where are those mustachioed and overdressed Albanians when you need them?

The pervert and the maid. Photo: Erika Ritterhaus

The middle-aged men and women re-discovering love and passion with a different partner and the women tasting infidelity may not have the same stigma that it did, say, 250 years ago. But Tcherniakov does not stop there. Despina with a blonde wig looks like something out of a Marx brothers’ movie but her relationship with Don Alonso may not be as consensual as we would like to think. They engage in simulated coitus in front of our eyes that is not all bad except that we do not expect the elder philosopher Don Alfonso to be such a dirty old man.

Pervert Don Alfonso kisses Ferrando and Fiordiligi on the lips quite seriously. A shotgun is introduced early in the performance and as in a Chekhov play, it is eventually used on stage.

I have spoken at great length about Tcherniakov, but the performers deserve much credit. True they are all in their fifties (except for Nicole Chevalier whose date of birth I could not find). But, even if they stumble now and then, they do superb work.  They are baritone Russell Braun as Guglielmo, soprano Agneta Eichenholz as Fiordiligi, tenor Rainer Trost as Ferrando, mezzo Claudia Mahnke as Dorabella, baritone Georg Nigl as Don Alfonso and soprano Nicole Chevalier as Despina. The Balthasar Neumann Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock plays Mozart’s music with incredible beauty and finesse.      

Directors pushing the envelope to produce operas in different locations with radical interpretations, especially in Europe, is nothing new. In fact, the last time Cosi was produced at the Aix-en-Provence Festival was in 2016 directed by Christophe Honoré. He set his production in a slum in a village in colonial Africa. The director was roundly booed.

This time the reaction at curtain call was mixed. There are boos no doubt but also applause of approval. I admire Tcherniakov’s work, and I would never boo his brilliant inventiveness and imagination. One can legitimately say that he may have gone too far with his inventiveness in this production but isn’t that the reason we want to see what he has in mind?

__________

Cosi Fan Tutte continues at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché until July 21, 2023 in Aix-en-Provence, France.  http://festival-aix.com/

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

THE THREEPENNY OPERA – REVIEW OF 2023 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Aix-en-Provence Festival is in its 75^th year and from the 4^th to the 24^th of July 2023 the gorgeous medieval city in the south of France becomes a mecca of cultural activities from productions of opera, ballet, concerts, and lectures to keep one occupied almost constantly.

The Festival opened on July 4 with a new production of The Threepenny Opera that featured some amazing features. It is done in French in a new translation by Alexandre Pateau in an adaptation by German man of the theater Thomas Ostermeier who also directed the production. L’opéra de quat’sous (four sous) is the French title of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1928 collaboration. The production is supposed to be faithful to the 1928 text with the addition of a new song, “Pauv’ Madam Peachum” with text by Yvette Guilbert, adapted by Pateau.

In an innovative step, the production uses actors from the Comédie-Française instead of conventional opera singers, and Le balcon, a band of about a dozen musicians playing a variety of instruments under the direction of Maxime Pascal.  

Most people know something about The Threepenny Opera. It is a product of the moral and financial morass of the 1920s Weimar Republic Berlin. It is not an opera in the conventional sense, of course, but a parody that attacks private property, capitalism, morality, the bourgeois, the justice system and gives a frightful portrait of life in the slums of London. Crime, corruption, prostitution are the milieu of the work. It is based to some extent on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.

Ostermeier takes an idiosyncratic approach to the opera by producing it partly as a concert version and partly as a fully performed work. This is no doubt a bow to the theory of epic theatre. More about that in a minute.  When the performance begins, we see four microphones prominently displayed on the stage.  Claina Clavaron sings “The Ballad of Mack the Knife” about the demi-monde of the opera and the anti-hero and preeminent criminal Macheath. otherwise known as Mac the Knife in a style resembling a 1920’s cabaret performance. 

Scene from Threepenny Opera. Photo © Jean-Louis Fernandez

From then on, the singing and the dialogue part of the opera will be performed on the microphone or by the characters interacting in the usual way in the theatre. The choice to have actors speak on the microphone rather than interact with the other characters in the scene is the choice of director Ostermeier. This is no doubt an attempt at giving us the then nascent idea of Brecht known as epic theatre, an attempt to treat a play as if it were the recitation of an epic poem rather than an attempt at realistic representation. This is not the place for an essay on epic theater but that idea and Brecht’s dedication to Marxism were not fully developed in 1928.

The Threepenny Opera is, despite its name, a play with songs and therefore has a lot of dialogue between sung numbers. The actors of the Comedie-Francaise spoke it, in various speeds as required by the text. Those without a facility for French dialogue at a certain speed (like moi) could not read the English surtitles with any appreciable speed. But I am sure there were few such types.

After the Ballad we get down to business in what is supposed to be a London slum but there is no indication of that. We start with the disgusting Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (Christian Hecq), a portly gentleman who is the boss of the beggars. He trains and outfits them at their cost and collects 50% of their “earnings.” This may be the original franchise method of doing business. Peachum has a “lovely” wife and partner called Celia (Veronique Vella). They have a pretty daughter called Polly (Marie Oppert) who, horrors, wants to marry some low-life and yes, it is Macheath himself played by a suave Birane Ba.

In the next scene we attend the nuptials of the happy couple with a collection of criminals and Chief of Police Brown (Benjamin Lavernhe). What follows is a scene of slapstick comedy with pies (cake really) thrown at people in a scene reminiscent of The Three Stooges. In true epic theatre style, the actors get down on their knees and clean up the mess made by the cakes when the party is over.

The production continues in the same style with Peachum’s desire to have Macheath arrested and Brown protecting him. They were army buddies after all. There is treachery, bribery, and ballads like the one about sexual obsession, melodrama, the song of Solomon and others.   

The sets by Magda Willi are minimal with no hint of London slums. The action takes place during the coronation of a queen, and you can decide a more precise chronology for that but don’t bother. There are video projections by Sebastien Dupouey of geometric figures and black and white photographs and film clips but I could not make head or tails of them. Florence von Gerkan’s costumes were modern but colourful to portray some of the low-lives and hookers of the underworld.

The actors of the Comédie-Française performed with assurance and aplomb from slapstick comedy to more serious scenes and especially comic ones of satire, parody and ridicule of society as well as betrayal, arrest and almost execution of Macheath. In case you forgot the end of the opera, rest at ease. Macheath is pardoned by the newly crowned queen and made a lord.

There are some lyrical songs and the assorted musicians of Pascal’s Le Balcon performed with gusto.

The Threepenny Opera has gained a sure-footed niche in modern culture with some of the songs like The Ballad of Mack the Knife that have gained honourable status. The work has posed difficulties in classification. There is no need. Opera houses and theatres are producing it on a regular basis, and no one should care about classification.

______________

The Threepenny Opera (L’opera de quat’sous) by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill opened on July 4 and will be performed on different dates until July 24, 2023, at the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com/

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

A WRINKLE IN TIME - REVIEW OF 2023 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

For its 2023 Schulich Children’s Play the Stratford Festival offers a redoubtable production of A Wrinkle in Time. The play is based on Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel adapted for the stage by Thomas Morgan Jones and it is a world premiere.

What do you get and more precisely and properly what do the youngsters get from the play. The answer is a great deal and more power to the Festival for choosing the novel and commissioning its sage adaptation. 

In no particular order, they get a sci-fi adventure story involving intergalactic travel. Better still, the travelers are youngsters.  We have the mathematically inclined but unsure of herself Meg Murry (Celeste Catena), her brother Charles Wallace (Noah Beemer) and her classmate Calvin (Robert Markus) set out on an incredible journey through some planets in search of Meg’s and Charles’s father played by Jamie Mac. They are “accompanied” by some pretty otherworldly advisors with pretty unusual names. They are Mrs. Whatsit (Nestor Lozano Jr.), Mrs. Who (Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah) and Mrs. Which (Kim Horsman).

Once they leave the earth, the intergalactic travelers will visit planets like Uriel and Camazotz and of course meet baddies like IT, the Man With Red Eyes (Christine Desjardinns) and the Dark Thing. 

From left: Jamie Mac as Father, Celeste Catena as Meg Murry

and Robert Markus as Calvin O'Keefe with (behind) Germaine Konji, 

Erica Peck and Jahlen Barnes as Aunt Beasts in A Wrinkle in Time. 

Stratford Festival 2023. Photo by David Hou

Jones as adapter and director has had to produce an oral and visual narrative of the novel in about 75 minutes. He does so with extraordinary success. The sets designed by Teresa Przybylski are spartan featuring two vertical, rectangular screens that take us to other worlds effortlessly. That is just the beginning. There are many projected images of other worlds and people with effective use of voiceovers. Imaginative use of lighting and dramatic music creates a visual and auditory experience that the written word cannot compete with. The totality of all is to never allow the youngsters’ attention to wane or waiver.

Credit is due to the designers and manipulators of some of the creatures in the play. The normal costumes of the earthlings and the extraordinary in look and imagination in the costumes of the others is owing to Costume Designer Robin Fisher and Assistant Set and Costume Designer Jung A Im. The marvelous lighting that shows storms, visits to other planets and great vistas is the work Kimberly Purtell and Assistants Alia Stephen and Harika Xu. 

Deanna H. Choi is the composer and sound designer with assistant sound designer    Frank Incer. The impressive projection designer is jaymez with assistant Corwin Ferguson. Assistants to the artists that provide ancillary but essential work to a production are rarely if ever mentioned let alone praised. The masterly work displayed in this production leads me to the conviction that the assistants must have played a significant role and should be praised. I praise them.

A Wrinkle in Time has thirty-eight parts (if I counted them correctly) from the three protagonists to voiceovers, to minor and major roles. Noah Beemer, Celeste Catena and Robert Markus are the only actors with a single role, and they do superb work. Director Jones keeps the rest of the cast busy. Take Erica Peck who plays Happy Medium, Camazotz Child, Camazotz Business Person, Man With Red Eyes Servant and Aunt Beast. Space does not permit me to mention them all the jobs these actors did.

All the above is the work of the director, the artistic team behind the scenes and the performers on stage.

What do the children get? First of all, an exciting and mind-expanding sci-fi story. It is also a paean to family love, family unity and the sacrifice that children are prepared to make to save their father. But there is more than their father that they are saving. They are saving civilization. They engage in the eternal fight between good and evil that has always been with us. The novel was written during the cold war when there was evil of course but also the fear of nuclear war and the annihilation of humanity. It seems that very little has changed, and the youngster born well into the 21^st century is well-served by a play that brings all of these factors into play for them to absorb.

_________________

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, adapted for the stage and directed by Thomas Morgan Jones continues until October 29, 2023, at the Avon Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. www.stratfordfestval.ca

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