|
|
|
|
An eerily cheerful 'Godot' |
||||
| ANGELIKE CONTIS | ||||
IF THE title of the play Waiting for Godot usually summons up images of actors in black turtlenecks reciting nonsensical dialogue in monotones, the Athens Festival performance of Samuel Beckett's work on July 30 broke the mould. While still true to Beckett's description of the work as a tragicomedy, Lithuanian director Cezaris Grauzinis' production unfolded against a colourful planetary backdrop with natural performances and even occasionally the feel of a children's play. The Greek-language production was staged at the festival's Pireos 260 warehouse-like venue in front of a full house. The 1948 play (originally written in French by the Irish academic-turned-playwright) is mostly a duet between two pathetic antiheroes/clowns, Estragon and Vladimir, who are waiting for a mysterious person named Godot. The two men, who refer to each other affectionately as "Didi" and "Gogo", were played with impeccable comic timing by bear-like Taxiarchis Chanos and the scrawnier Manolis Mavromatakis, respectively. It took about two seconds to see the holes in their thoughts and the depths of their bond as Mavromatakis' Gogo toyed with his shoe while Chanos' Didi winced with pain from a stomachache. As their dialogue flitted from one nonsensical topic to another, only to cycle back again, the duo sounded like idiosyncratic pensioners. Though the miserable Gogo sometimes mused on their possible separation ("There are times when I wonder if it wouldn't be better for us to part"), the two were clearly stuck together. If sometimes their words were overpowered by the electronic music and the warehouse's acoustics, the actors were entirely in the moment, turning body aches, Biblical debates and suicidal wishes alike into comic gold. By Act II, some spectators started to look at their watches, but the performance was nearly three hours long - and intentionally static. ("Nothing happens, twice," Irish Times critic Vivian Mercer said of the play in 1956.) The thespians were tireless, though, whether assuming snooty Athenian voices to mock etiquette, or striking a comic yoga pose. The play laden with questions is usually staged against a backdrop with a single tree, which always sprouts a few leaves in the second act. For the Greek production, behind the miserable tree was an impressive scenery with sand, moon craters and a beautiful video projection of the earth, sun and moon slowly adrift. The orbs' movements emphasised the static nature of the protagonists' wait - and underlined the feeling of purgatory. Another duo prompting more questions about human relations passed through the barren landscape - whip-bearing Pozzo (Christos Sapountzis) and his servant-on-a-rope Lucky (Angeliki Stellatou). Former Omada Edafous principal dancer Stellatou, dressed in sequinned circus clothes and bathed in a clear white light, gave a particularly eerie soliloquy. If the ending was too forced and grandiose - with the hysterical laughter of a fifth, angel-like character (Maro Papadopoulou) and heightened, playful electronic music - Grauzinis' staging was a lively reworking of Beckett's classic. |
||||
ATHENS NEWS , 01/08/2008, page: A30
|
