Michel Piccoli, Patrice Chereau in Athens
Two years ago, leading French newspaper Le Monde welcomed with praises Peter Brook’s production at the Buffes du Nord theater, which was based on the correspondence between Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper, and starred Michel Piccoli and Natasha Parry. American playwright Carol Rocamora’s play «Ta main dans la mienne» (Your Hand in Mine) is based on the 412 letters that Chekhov and Knipper exchanged. Wherever the play has been staged, it has received praises, both for the acting of the two artists, as well as for Brook’s subtle direction. British newspaper The Guardian noted the actors’ sensitivity and the direction made the play stand out after the London premiere. The Greek public will be able to enjoy the play for five days in the middle of May: It will be on at Athens’s Ilisia-Denisi Theater between May 11 and 15, with the help of the Attiki Cultural Society. At the same venue, local audiences will also have the opportunity to watch, on May 19 and 20, Patrice Chereau in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s «Les carnets du sous-sol,» a French adaptation of the text by Andre Markovitz. The direction is by Chereau, who is also in charge of the production’s lighting. Great co-existence Rocamora’s text is about a special period in the history of art and theater, when great personalities, such as Chekhov, Stanislavsky, Gorki and Rachmaninoff were contemporaries, and about a relationship that appears to be relevant today due to the theatrical adaptation. The letters speak of love, life and death. Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper met on an evening in 1898, during a lecture on the «Seagull,» and never parted. They got secretly married in 1901, left on their honeymoon but lived separately as he had to remain in Yalta and she had to be in Moscow. Their correspondence has given form to a theatrical evening of exquisite simplicity (the sets by Chloe Obolensky, who is also responsible for the costumes, consist merely of three chairs, a table and a carpet), which The Guardian described as highly intellectual, very beautiful and with a bright tenderness. For his part, Patrice Chereau, who has received numerous international awards for his directing, faces a landmark work of world literature, with added notes by a number of artists, ranging from Chereau himself to Woody Allen. The performance will be presented in Moscow in April and will then travel to New York and Athens.
