COURAGEOUS - FAULTS WIPE OUT VIRTUES OF NEW CANADIAN PLAY

Patrick Galligan and Tom Barnett. Photography by Cylla von Tiedemann
Michael Healy’s new play Courageous opened on January 6, 2010 at the Tarragon Theatre. It has many virtues and one wishes one could write about them only and ignore the play’s faults. Unfortunately the latter are too awful to ignore and almost outweigh the good parts.

In the beginning we hear the Canadian version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” with Bonavista and Vancouver Island replacing for California and New York Island. No matter because it sets the tone for a Canadian event. Good. On the stage we see quotations from Northrop Frye, Isaiah Berlin and Michael Ignatieff. That sets the tone for pretty serious stuff and anticipation is built for intelligent and perhaps witty theatre.

The play opens in the office of Tom (Tom Barnett), a Justice of the Peace who performs civil marriages and we meet a young couple who are about to be married. They are Todd (Brandon McGibbon) and Tammy (Erin MacKinnon). Tammy is arguing very vociferously with her friend and witness Lisa (Melissa MacPherson). The argument is centered on the fact that Lisa “blew” Todd. The latter is wearing a baseball cap sideways; he is unshaven and unkempt and is wearing shorts because that was the only thing that was clean.

Todd forgot to inform the second witness to show up for the ceremony and they are forced to induct a bystander called Arthur (Maurice Dean Wint) to perform that function. Without belabouring the point, these people can best be described as white trash.

Brian (Pat Galligan), a self-righteous and aggressive lawyer charges onto to the scene and asks that his marriage ceremony be performed immediately because he has a luncheon appointment with a client. Tom refuses to perform the ceremony because he disapproves of gay marriages. He is a devout Catholic who is also openly gay. In other words he belongs to a church that does not want him. A nice bit of irony.

Brian files a complaint against Tom with the Human Rights Tribunal and the two face off in the Tribunal’s waiting room just before the hearing. A lengthy Shavian discussion follows about gay rights, the right to refuse to perform a civil ceremony on the grounds of personal beliefs etc. It has some highly entertaining moments.

That is the first act. In Act II we meet the trashy trio again. The whole tenor of the play changes. Todd becomes a narrator and commentator as well as a character. As narrator he has some pretensions to intelligence. The incongruities between the first and second parts of the play are painful. We can treat them as two separate plays with some of the characters crossing over into the second play but that would not help the situation at all.

Arthur, who was a suave, meticulously-spoken wealthy Sudanese man in Act I returns as George, a Somali refugee who occupies an apartment next door to Todd and Tammy. Now we face the other side of “rights” – the rights of refugees to government support and the rights of the trashy couple to the same among other issues of newcomers versus locals.

The intelligent discussion of Act I becomes dreary sitcom jokes in Act II. Whatever connecting links there may be between the two acts, they are to be gleaned on close examination without adding one bit to the enjoyment to Act II.

Healy had a good idea for a one-act play and he took it as far as he could. For the second act he changed gears and could not even figure out how to end it. A character simply says “the end” when enough time has gone by and the audience can be released to go to their homes.

Despite the uneven quality of the play or plays, the actors do superior work. Tom Rooney plays Brian’s lover and would-be husband as well as an alcoholic employer called Pete in the second half. He is excellent. Very high marks to Galligan and McGibbon. Two very good roles for Wint and he excels in both. Tom Barnett is simply hilarious as the devout but gay Catholic who tries to be realistic about his position even when he is out in left field.

The kudos for good acting belong to the actors and no doubt the director gets a part of the praise for bringing it out. But a lot of blame must rest with Richard Rose. He should have insisted on more dramaturgical remedies before choosing to produce the play.
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Courageous by Michael Healy opened on January 6 and ran until February 7, 2010 at the Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario. www.tarragontheatre.com.

LETTERS TO MY GRANDMA TACKLES LARGE ISSUES THROUGH PRIVATE MEMORIES

Photo of Anusree Roy by Alex Felipe

The multicultural makeup of the Greater Toronto Area has been noted, studied and commented upon extensively. One of the less edifying features of multiculturalism is the habit of some of the immigrants bringing over, and the continuation of old country conflicts here. This feature tends to be more reprehensible when others do it. When one ethnic group marches on Ottawa to protest the treatment of its people in the old country, it considers its action as a rational exercise of democratic rights. When other groups fight their internecine battles in Canada some people are far less sympathetic and simply retort that you should not bring your ethnic differences here.

Landing in Canada, enjoying the material benefits that it so generously bestows (for those that can get them) and even acquiring Canadian citizenship does not sever immigrants from their roots. However one may wish that they will leave their political, sectarian and religious issues behind, it is impossible to accomplish. They are part of the essential being of the immigrant and they can not be abandoned upon landing at the airport.

The experiences and memories (some real, some borrowed) of the old country have become sources for works of literature and the theatre and Anusree Roy’s play Letters to My Grandma, now playing at Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace is a good example of the genre.

The play, a one-woman show with numerous characters played by the author, takes place in two worlds: the world of India of 1947 and today’s Canada. The connecting link is Malobee, a Canadian woman who on her wedding day opens some letters about her grandmother’s life in 1947 India.

Ethnic cleansing and movements of populations became almost commonplace in Europe in the 20th century. From the Armenians to the Pontians, to the Jews and more recent examples in the Balkans, mass killings of people hold few surprises for us. When Britain left British India in 1947, it partitioned it into two countries: India and Pakistan. What followed was religious violence on a massive scale that resulted in the deaths of some two million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. More than 12 million people were displaced (more than the entire population of Greece).

Roy has attempted quite successfully to capture the fear, the utter terror, the hatred and the horrors of events that are incomprehensible. The plump, bright-eyed Canadian Malobee is dressed in a traditional white dress and is getting married in Canada in 2009. She opens her grandmother’s letters that describe events of the past. The scene switches to 1947 India and humanity is reduced to fear, terror, horror, begging for survival and searching for pity. In a powerful performance, Roy switches from one character to the next as her grandmother tries to survive and escape from a world that is sheer hell.

The play is performed on an empty stage and director Thomas Morgan Jones brings out an emotionally charged production that is quite riveting.

Letters To My Grandma is classically Canadian in its reach from Canada to India, from the immigrant to her roots half way around the world. The immigrants’ roots, however disparate and different, may be what unite Canadians or at least provide points of connection in a country whose people often seem to have very little in common.
The play is only 45 minutes long and it needs to be expanded or perhaps combined with another short play to make a complete night at the theatre.

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Letters to My Grandma by Anusree Roy opened on November 25 and ran until December 12, 2009 at Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, 16 Ryerson Avenue, Toronto, Ontario. www.passemuraille.on.ca (416) 504-7529

RESTORATION COMEDY IN BUFFALO – THE RELAPSE FROM THE IRISH CLASSICAL STAGE COMPANY

Leah Russo, center, as Berinthia, with the cast.
Photo: Gene Witkowski

You don’t get much Restoration Comedy these days.

When was the last time the Stratford Shakespeare Festival or The Canadian Stage Company produced a play by Congreve or a Wycherley? Use the fingers on both hands and look to your toes.

Soulpepper Theatre Company did stage Congreve’s The Way of the World in 2008 but they dropped any notion of maintaining the play’s cultural and linguistic milieu and went for an Ontario-accented comedy. It got us through the text but not without pain.

If you can’t get Restoration Comedy at home the only alternative is to go looking for it abroad. In this case I did not have to go much further than Buffalo, New York where the Irish Classical Stage Company has staged The Relapse by Sir John Vanbrugh.

The ICTC has been around since 1990 and puts on six productions a year. The plays seem well-chosen and broad-ranging. The list of productions over the years shows works by Moliere, O’Neill, Coward, Shaw, Wilde, Pinter, Sheridan and many others. Indeed an eclectic mix of plays.

The productions are put on at the Andrew Theatre in downtown Buffalo. It is an attractive theatre-in-the-round that holds 200 people.

The Relapse is a classic Restoration Comedy and was first produced in 1697. It is set against the rigid class structure of English society and the pursuit of money, marriage, sex and social status.

Sir Novelty Fashion purchased a peerage and now wants to marry the rich but déclassé Miss Hoyden. She is the daughter of the aptly named country bumpkin Sir Tunbelly Clumsey. The penniless brother, Young Fashion, will attempt to marry Miss Hoyden by pretending to be Sir Novelty.

Loveless, the happily married former rake goes to London with his lovely wife Amanda but becomes seriously attracted to her even lovelier cousin, the young widow Beritnthia. Add a matchmaker called Coupler, a chaplain and a few other worthies and you have a play of wit, high and low manners and ornate language that can be a delight to see.

Director Derek Campbell has decided to eschew the 17th century setting of the play with its fancy costumes, wigs, swords and manners and sets the play in the mid-1960’s. Vanbrugh wrote much of the play in verse and in the precise and brittle style of Restoration Comedy. By bringing the play into the 20th century, the Restoration set, costumes and paraphernalia are exchanged for modern dress, a few couches and coffee tables. Old wine can perhaps be put in a new bottle without changing the quality of its taste or the nuance of its aroma. Can you do the same with an old play?

We are in 20th century England listening to Restoration English, pronounced with an American accent producing tortured English accents and watching characters in modern dress behaving like 17th century rakes, fops, country bumpkins etc. How are we to appreciate the difference in class without the assistance of costume, manners and accent?

Not very easily. The obstacles that Campbell has set for himself and the actors are insurmountable. The crisp language of Restoration Comedy suffers the fatal double incongruity of being spoken in woeful accents in a milieu that has no relation to the original. In the Toronto production, there was no attempt at English accents and the result was equally awful. The attempts at an English accent in Buffalo ranged from the execrable to the completely inept. Not all of them tried. Robert Rutland as the country bumpkin Sir Tunbelly Clumsey lived up to his name but he sounded like an American bumpkin and not an English one. He looks like a natural comic but not in that role in this production.

The only other comet in the accent department goes to Mary Beth Lacki as Miss Hoyden, who manages to produce an accent suggestive of northern England. The actors do not so much deserve criticism as the comment that they are mostly in the wrong play. Vincent O’Neill, the Artistic Director of ICTC can do comedy and much else no doubt but as Sir Novelty he appeared to be striving for laughs without getting them. Chris Corporandy as Young Fashion, Gary Darling as Coupler and the others would have produced much better results in a play with a language that that they can pronounce.
The next production of the ICTC will be The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh and it will run from February 26 to March 28, 2010.


The Relapse by Sir John Vanbrugh opened on January 15 and will run until February 14, 2010 at the Andrews Theatre, 625 Main Street, Buffalo, N.Y. www.irishclassicaltheatre.com

ALMOST PITCH-PERFECT HAY FEVER FROM ALUMNAE THEATRE

Judith Bliss (Dinah Watts) poses with her children Simon (Ken MacAlpine) and Sorel (Tamara Lubek) Photo by Joshua Meles

Noel Coward’s Hay Fever is an unlikely comedy. The Bliss family and their servant are spending a weekend at their country house in Berkshire. They are visited by four guests and nothing much happens. No one is murdered, there is no mystery to unravel or any plot to develop. Yet, Hay Fever, if done well, can be a very funny play. Ineptly done it is a monumental bore.

Alumnae Theatre Company gives the play a superb production, eliciting howls of laughter and providing a highly entertaining night at the theatre.

Coward provided lots the opportunities for a good director and cast to work with, however difficult it may seem. Judith Bliss (played to perfection by Dinah Watts) is a retired actress who is planning a comeback. Retired is a misnomer because she never stopped acting or taking theatrical poses on or off the stage. At one point Judith’s daughter Sorel (Tamara Lubek) tells her to “be natural” for a change. For the Bliss family being theatrical, self-absorbed and eccentric is being completely natural.

David (Hereward Pooley), the father who is a novelist and son Simon (Ken MacAlpine) complete the wacky Bliss family which gets some assistance in its bizarre conduct from their potty maid Clara (Anne Harper).

Each family member, unbeknownst to the others, invites a guest for the weekend. The guests become more like victims who need to plan and execute an escape after a night with the off-the-wall Blisses.

All the guests “fall in love” or are told they are in love or have a flirtation with one of the Blisses. Sandy (Leete Stetson) is cornered by Sorel and is caught kissing her in the library. Judith tells Richard (Jonathan Thomas) that she is in love with him and her husband must be informed immediately. The crafty Myra (Tina Sterling) tries to butter up David and they are caught kissing by Judith. The brainless Jackie (Kaitlyn Riordan) is supposed to be in love with Simon. That is a lot of activity for a play that has no plot and incidentally a lot of laughs.

The guests have become victims and the final act is a hilarious scene of them trying to escape from the Bliss house unseen. The self-absorbed Blisses get into an argument about the streets of Paris and the guests manage to escape behind their backs.

The play needs some astute and delicate handling. The lines are only funny if delivered properly. Each laugh depends on timing, delivery and the reaction of the recipients. Kudos to McDonald for orchestrating all and providing a fine production.

Dinah Watts leads the cast with a superb performance. She is allowed to overact, strike poses, gesture and modulate her voice. She does it impeccably. Pooley is hilarious as the somewhat disheveled novelist who finds himself accosted by an attractive woman. He and Sterling produce fine comedy.

The Bliss children are nothing if not theatrical and Lubek is especially good. Anne Harper’s maid was just what you would expect from a servant working for nutsos.
The English accents, so difficult to achieve at times, ranged from the acceptable to the excellent and the result was a very good night at the theatre.

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Hay Fever by Noel Coward opened on January 15 and will run until January 30, 2010 at the Alumnae Theatre, 70 Berkeley Street, Toronto, Ontario. http://www.alumnaetheatre.com/. Telephone (416) 364-4170

SOULPEPPER THEATRE COMPANY IN 2009

THE YEAR IN REVIEW

By James Karas
jameskaras@rogers.com

The season for most theatre companies starts sometime in September and ends in May. Then the summer festivals take over until the fall. The same arrangement applies to schools and the end of vacations, of course, and some day the calendar year may begin on September 1.

Theatre companies in Toronto follow the September-May schedule except for Soulpepper Theatre Company which follows the calendar year for its season. As such the end of the year is the appropriate time to review what they did during 2009 and comment about their 2010 season.

There is little doubt that if you want to see good plays in Toronto, Soulpepper is your best bet in terms of repertory, number of plays and quality of production.

Soulpepper produced a hefty eleven plays during 2009. All were written in the twentieth century. Three were Canadian, three American, two English, two Hungarian and one French.

The season opened in February with Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, a brilliant and intricate play that features verbal pyrotechnics and requires acting with precision and finesse. Unfortunately, Soulpepper’s production fell short of what one would expect of them or would want to see in a Stoppard play.

The wide-ranging references to art, poetry and fiction and the lines from The Importance of Being Earnest that are interwoven in the dialogue of Travesties fell flat. The great speeches and witty lines failed almost completely to connect with the audience leaving one with a bad evening at the theatre.

The second production was American David Mamet’s classic outpouring of vitriol and obscenities, Glengarry Glen Ross. If nothing worked in Travesties, the opposite was true of Glengarry. It was a pitch-perfect production that happened to have connections to the current subprime mortgage mess created by American banks’ insatiable greed.

David Storch directed Eric Peterson, Peter Donaldson, Albert Schultz and William Webster through the orgy of immorality represented in the play. A riveting night at the theatre was the result.

With Joe Orton’s Loot we moved to a different type of morality completely. Joe Orton’s world is matter-of-factly amoral and vicious. The play opens with a woman in a coffin at centre stage. Her husband displays little emotion and is mostly concerned with the flowers while her son uses the coffin to stash away stolen cash.

The dialogue is like a sadistic Oscar Wilde and I am not sure if director Jim Warren captured all the blackness of the play but it was an enjoyable production none the less. Oliver Dennis, Nicole Underhay and Matthew Edison had the leading roles.

Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing is set in the more familiar and congenial (for the audience) atmosphere of a working class apartment in New York in the 1930’s. It tells the story of a family (could be Greek, Polish or anything but in this case it is Jewish) that tries to make ends meet, maintain family traditions and morals in a new world and just survive. A moving production of the play’s several subplots with Nancy Palk’s powerful performance dominating the evening.

For its next production Soulpepper maintained a similar milieu. This time it was an immigrant family in Toronto in the 1970’s in David French’s Of the Fields, Lately, As in Awake and Sing this is a family drama in which a strong woman tries to effect reconciliation between her husband and her son. It is an emotionally charged play superbly directed by Ted Dykstra with marvelous performances by Diane D’Aquila, Kenneth Walsh, Eric Peterson and Jeff Lillico.

Billy Bishop Goes To War was the next production of the quintessentially Canadian play by John Gray and Eric Peterson. Bishop was the most highly-decorated Canadian war hero of World War I and the play about him has become the most frequently produced Canadian play. Ted Dykstra directed Peterson in the one-man show with Peterson paying some 20 characters. A planeload of kudos to Peterson and the production.

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? presents a family drama of a different kind, to put it mildly. Two couples meet for drinks after a party at a New England college. They could treat us to witty repartee à la Neil Simon or they could launch vicious verbal warfare and cruel games. They do the latter as they examine and reveal not only their lives but by extension American history. Diana Leblanc directed Diego Matamoros and Nancy Palk in stellar performances.

A married couple engaged in verbal warfare is at the center of Ferenc Molnar’s The Guardsman but the atmosphere is one of hilarity rather than brutality. The warring couple are actors and the jealous husband (Albert Schultz) has to pretend he is his wife’s (Kristen Thomson) secret lover in order to win her back. There are several layers to the deception and perceptions of the play all adding up to a thoroughly enjoyable night at the theatre. Molnar was a Hungarian playwright and you don’t see too many plays from that part of the continent. Take it as an added bonus from Soulpepper.

The promise of moving away from twentieth century drama and offering a Greek tragedy, unfortunately did not materialize. The brochure containing the 2009 productions stated that we will get Sophocles’ Antigone. It was to be “in a new adaptation by Evan Webber with Chris Abraham” which is enough to send chills up your spine but, eh, it’s better than nothing.

We did not get even that. We had to settle for Jean Anouilh’s version of the myth as he saw it during the Nazi occupation of France.

Liisa Repo-Martell and R.H. Thomson did fine work in the leading roles of Antigone and Creon. But director Chris Abraham never brought the production to life and the whole thing was a big disappointment. Soulpepper can and should do more classics and move away from the twentieth century.

The penultimate production of the year was Parfumerie by Miklós László, another Hungarian playwright whom you do not run into every day. We are in the spirit of Christmas and a romantic comedy where love triumphs is de rigueur. Parfumerie tells the story of two people who do not get along at work but who are carrying on a passionate epistolary affair. We all know how that is going to end! Oliver Dennis and Patricia Fagan are the lovers and Joseph Ziegler is the humane owner of the shop where they work. Morris Panych directs the heart-warming comedy.

Production Number 11 for the year was Dennis Lee’s Civil Elegies. This was poetry recital combined with singing with piano accompaniment. There are a number of unusual elements to the event. It is based on a poem by Lee, who was Toronto’s first Poet Laureate. It is about Toronto and it consists entirely of verse. No doubt there are other plays based on poetry but I am not aware of one that combines all of the above.

The show was put together by Mike Ross (who also performs it) and Lorenzo Savoini. Albert Schultz directed. This is unusual fare and all we can do is encourage them to give us more.

In 2010, Soulpepper will produce twelve plays in what appears to be a more restricted repertoire. Canadian content is increased to four plays, the Americans and the English get three each and the Russians and the Irish one apiece. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country are the two non-twentieth century offerings.

Four of the productions are revivals: Billy Bishop Goes to War, Glengarry Glen Ross, A Raisin in the Sun and A Christmas Carol were all seen in the last couple of years. They are worthy productions but there are countless plays out there that could have been produced instead of regurgitating recent successes.

John Murrell’s Waiting for the Parade, David French’s Jitters, Sharon Pollock’s Doc are the other Canadian plays and although one can quibble about their choices one cannot mount a serious argument against them.

Oh What A Lovely War by Joan Littlewood, Theatre Workshop and Charles Chilton holds a lot of promise and may be an interestingly compared to Waiting for the Parade, another war-time play. Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country was produced a couple of years ago at the Shaw Festival and we could have waited for a while longer for another staging. That was the Brian Friel version and we will have to see what Susan Coyne has in mind in her adaptation of the play.

Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw, a dark comedy, is to be eagerly anticipated as it comes hot on the heels of Loot. I have never seen Sharon Pollock’s Doc nor Brian Friel’s Faith Healer and I can hardly say anything about those choices. Arthur Miler’s Death of a Salesman is a classic that can be seen repeatedly with profit.

I could do without the revivals but that’s because I am not Soulpepper’s Chief Financial Officer or fundraiser.

One can always wish for more or different plays but one can also be grateful for a company that started on a shoe string and provides the richest and most varied theatre in Toronto.
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The 2010 season starts on January 22 with previous of Billy Bishop Goes To War. It opens on January 26, 2010 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill Street, Toronto, Ontario. For more information telephone (416) 866-8666 or go to http://www.soulpepper.ca/

(Photo: Kristen Thomson and Albert Schultz in The Guardsman)

MADAMA BUTTERFLY – OPERA FOR EVERYONE FROM THE COC

The Canadian Opera Company is in its 60th year of existence and in its fourth season at The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. The new venue may not have put Toronto on top of the operatic world but it can probably stand its ground against most opera houses. The new opera house is almost completely sold out for most performances and it is a world away from the old, unlamented O’Keefe/Hummingbird/Sony Centre.

The seven operas offered for the 2009-10 season are nicely spread out over the year instead of the old method of feast or famine. Full houses have resulted in additional performances and the present looks bright.

The COC offers Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Igor Stravinsky’s The Nightingale for the fall season which runs from September 26 to November 5, 2009. The next two operas, Carmen and Otello will be shown from late January to the end of February, 2010.

Madama Butterfly is a familiar favourite whereas The Nightingale is a new creation by Robert Lepage. It premieres on October 17 and with Lepage as the force behind it, the tickets for the eight performances are all but completely sold out.

Butterfly is an approachable work and can be enjoyed by the neophyte as well as the opera aficionado. In fact there was a little girl sitting on a seat booster across the aisle from me. The COC’s revival of its 2003 production makes it an even greater pleasure to see and hear the opera. Director Brian Macdonald has opted for a simple and very attractive production. He eschews any attempts at making it ‘different’ and the result is a terrific night at the opera.

The COC has two casts for the main characters. The night I saw it the role of Cio-Cio San (Butterfly) was sung by Romanian soprano Adina Nitescu in her COC debut. What one notices again is that Butterfly is an opera for a soprano with a bunch of visitors thrown in. Pinkerton, Sharpless, Suzki and Goro come and go – Cio-Cio San is on stage most of the time and she has a job to do. Nitescu has the vocal and acting equipment with which to do it. From “Un bel di” to her dramatic farewell to her son and suicide she delivered a moving and beautifully sung performance. She is physically suitable for the role. She does not exactly look like a 15-year old Japanese girl but if she did she would probably not be able to sing or act.

Newfoundlander tenor David Pomeroy was the swaggering Lieut. Pinkerton who is a heartless naval officer in the first act and a remorse-ridden man in the final act when he finds out that he fathered a child with the child geisha. Puccini does not overwork the tenor in this opera but Pomeroy gave a fine account of himself from the Act I aria and duet to the final trio. No doubt we will see more of him.

Baritone James Westman was a very sympathetic and well-done Consul Sharpless. He sang well and interacted very effectively with Butterfly. The pain and sympathy he felt for her was palpable and that is high praise for a singer who may be more interested in the notes than in the acting.

Puccini’s plush music was brought out by the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra conducted by Carlo Montanaro.

THEATER OF ANCIENT MESSENE TO REOPEN

Nikos Dionysios Planning Production in 2010

Plans are afoot to reopen the Theater of Ancient Messene.

Nikos Dionysios, director, actor and choreographer, has organized the Dionysios Theater Company with a view to producing ancient drama at the site as early as next summer. In fact he wants to stage Euripides’s The Bacchae and hopes to take the production on tour.

Dionysios, with his deep roots in Messinia, wants nothing less than a cultural revival of the south-western corner of Peloponnesus. He envisions not just theatrical productions but exchanges with other companies, workshops and conferences on the theater.

Your knowledge of the prefecture Messinia may go no further than eating Kalamata olives and you may not have heard of Ancient Messene and its theater at all. You are not alone. Systematic excavations of the site did not begin until 1986 and there is still much work to be done.

Ancient Messenia did not have particularly cordial relations with its neighbors, the Spartans, and its citizens ended up as helots of the latter. In 369 BC, they achieved independence and the Theban General Epaminondas built the city of Messene as the new capital.

Ancient Messene is the best-preserved city of southern Greece. It is located in the Municipality of Ithomi about 20 kilometers from Kalamata, and was probably the most-ignored site in Greece. Ancient Messene has a stadium, an assembly hall (Vouleftirio) and a theater. The stadium is useable as a theater and can hold up to 7000 people according to Dionysios. The assembly hall can accommodate about 700. The theater should be ready for use in two years and will hold about 4000 spectators.

“I want to capture the poetry of Ancient Greek tragedy” said Dionysios in a recent interview at a café overlooking Ancient Messene. “Greek tragedy is poetry, music and movement” he added “and we need to reach back to those elements even in translation”

“Take the Chorus, for example” he continued. “They spoke in unison, they chanted and they danced. You rarely if ever see Greek Tragedy performed that way these days.”

Dionysios trained and worked under the legendary director Karolos Koun. He has performed in theatres ranging from the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and Epidaurus in Greece to venues in Europe, Hong Kong and North America. Ephemera, his first work as writer and director was distinguished as the Best Production of the Year.

He has also created Masks, a production based on ancient poetry, and Bolero, a play based on the life of Isadora Duncan, among others.

In 2003 he directed Aristophanes’ The Birds at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada. That was the first time that the Festival had staged Aristophanes in its fifty years of existence.

In 2007, he directed and choreographed Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes with the Corfu Regional Repertory Company. In 2008 he directed, choreographed and acted the role of Dionysus in The Bacchae with the same company. The production was seen and well received in Albania and in southern Italy.

Kostas Georgakopoulos, the mayor of the Municipality of Ithomi, sees a great opportunity for the cultural and commercial development of the area. “It will be easier to go from Athens to Ancient Messene than from Athens to Epidaurus when the new highway is completed” he pointed out as he looked at the ancient site and on the spectacular vista of hills beyond.

“We want to enhance and promote the cultural life of the area” added the mayor. “We want to put Ithomi on the cultural map of Europe.”

Christos Athanasopoulos, the President of the Council of Ancient Messene nodded in agreement.

Excavation of the theater at Ancient Messene revealed the startling fact that it had a moveable and removable stage. The stage was mounted on large wheels and it could be moved forward towards the audience. The stage was as much as five meters (15 feet) off the ground. The reason for the construction of a moveable stage is not certain according to Petros Themelis, the archeologist who has spent more than 20 years excavating the site.

It was thought that the moveable stage was a Roman invention that the Greeks had copied after the conquest of Greece by the Romans. This appears not to be so and in fact the theater at Ancient Messene proves the reverse: the Romans copied the idea of a moveable stage from the Greeks. The stage was also completely removable. It was put away in storage at the end of the performance.

“I don’t expect to have a moveable stage” commented Dionysius “but I do want to see prominent theatrical companies from Europe to stage high-quality productions in Ancient Messene. It would be marvelous for people to see how other directors and actors treat Greek tragedy” he said.

Asked about how he plans to finance his vision, Dionysios commented that productions in ancient Athens used to be paid for by wealthy Athenians called “chorigoi”. “In fact there was a very rich and powerful family here called Saethidas during Roman times. They spent a lot of money to preserve the theater. I am checking out if there are any of them still around to repeat what their ancestors did two thousand years ago” he said. “If not we will have to rely on modern day Saethidases and local support.”

“Look what Herodes Atticus did. He built a theatre to commemorate his wife and two thousand years later his name is still a household word for theatre lovers in Greece. Not a bad monument!” he continued.

“Culture is good for business and business is good for culture” he added. Just imagine what even a few thousand visitors to an area can do for its economy. You can look at any number of examples from Canada to Europe where cultural events give a tremendous boom to a community” he concluded.

Mount Ithomi had a sanctuary in honour of Zeus Ithomatas. In the 16th century the Monastery of Voulkano was built over Zeus’s sanctuary. There was also in all likelihood a sanctuary dedicated to Dionysus, the god of the theater.

“We have pagan and Christian representatives close at hand” commented Dionysios with a smile. “With local help and maybe a modern Saethidas or Herodes Atticus, the theater of Ancient Messene may be up and running again after a couple thousand years of darkness.”