Fresh from summer tour, ‘The Flower of Levante’ is in town

Attica locations next for Xenopoulos’s play

Following a summer tour around Greece with stops in no fewer than 45 cities and towns, “The Flower of Levante,” written by Grigoris Xenopoulos, is heading back to Athens.

Directed by Costas Tsianos and starring Spyros Papadopoulos, the production goes back on stage tomorrow at the Melina Mercouri Vrachon Theater with 10 more performances to follow.

This week’s performance are as follows: at the Petra Theater in Petroupolis on Wednesday, at the Euripedeio Theater in Salamina on Friday, at the Rafina senior high school playground on Saturday and the Alexis Minotis Theater in Aegaleo on Sunday.

One of Xenopoulos’s most popular works, “The Flower of Levante” features lovable, innocent Nionios from Zakynthos whose greatest fear is earthquakes.

This is why he leaves his beloved island behind and moves to Athens, where he starts working for the Valdis family – Mr Valdis is a married lawyer, with a mother-in-law, a mistress, two daughters and their hopeful suitors. Who can put some order to all this? Nionios, of course, who, in a very short period of time, becomes indispensable – going from servant to master. But Nionios becomes increasingly homesick, finding it hard to deal with the noise and commotion of the big city and its inhabitants. Is he ready to return home?

Apart from Papadopoulos, the cast includes Haris Sozos, Christina Alexanian, Evangelia Moumouri, Melina Vamvaka, Angelos Bouras, Despina Yiannopoulou, Tzeni Theona, Iro Bezou, Stelios Petsos and Constantinos Hadzidimitriou. The sets were created by Giorgos Gavalas.