Setting Racine tragedy in a bar in Rome
Daring yet mature director Yiannis Houvardas will stage Racine’s 1670 tragedy «Berenice» at the Amore Theater at the beginning of February. The play is to be performed by the theater company he founded and now heads, the Notos Theater. The company, which celebrates its 15th birthday this year, has achieved a prominent position in Greek theater with its wide variety of works, artists and styles. The tragedy to be staged focuses on three royals beset by deadlocks in their love lives: They are the Roman Emperor Titus, Judaean Queen Berenice and King of Commagene Antiochus, who are all in Rome at crucial points in their lives. Titus is crowned emperor and, unable to marry someone who is not Roman, has to put an end to his fiery sexual relationship with Berenice. She falls apart, while another love disaster is just around the corner: that of Antiochus, friend to Titus, who is also deeply in love with Berenice. «It is a love triangle that people today can absolutely relate to,» said director Houvardas, denying that it is just a royal drama set in Roman times. «If one takes out the historical framework, all these love stories, the drama and the love triangles are more reminiscent of Fellini’s Rome in the 1960s. That is why I placed these three characters and their story in a similar world: a bar in Rome in the ’60s.» The many fans of the Notos Theater are anxiously awaiting the new production because, apart from everything else, it stars actress Amalia Moutoussi. This is Moutoussi’s first collaboration with Houvardas and the Notos Theater – she will join forces with two equally important actors – Akylas Karazissis, who plays Titus, and Nikos Kouris, who plays Antiochus. «She is wonderful to work with,» said the director about Moutoussi. «I am impressed by the attention and seriousness she puts into everything she does. That is where you understand an actor’s maturity, when, though they have done so much, they remain open as if they didn’t know a thing. That is how she comes to rehearsals every day.» Racine has always excited Houvardas, who in the past has also staged the playwright’s «Phaedra» with actress Olia Lazaridou. He explained that it wasn’t so much Racine’s themes, which can be found in the works of other writers, but the structure that fascinated him. «There is something extreme about Racine – these rigid verses that must come alive in translation and on stage are a huge challenge.» Houvardas decided on «Berenice» after discussing the matter with Moutoussi and the other actors. «This Racine play is even more extreme, because nothing happens. There is no assassination, no blood, no change from the beginning to the end. From the moment that Titus announces his decision to leave Berenice until the moment he actually does it, no action takes place. That, however, is nothing but the calm surface of the sea, a million things happen beneath it. And that is exactly what we are trying to do, go deep into the souls of these people and see what happens there. For a well-written play is always the depiction of emotional undercurrents.» Houvardas was initially planning to use the translation into prose that poet Stratis Paschalis had done in the past, but the poet presented him with an entirely new one, in rhyming verse. «As soon as I read the first act, I knew that was how the play should be staged. In that structure, it brought out a complete world.» Houvardas admitted the difficulty that lies in staging verse that rhymes, let alone by Racine. «Initially, we gave top priority to that. You need endless readings to get used to it, to memorize it, to get really fed up with it, I would say – only then are you ready to speak it, when it is no longer something that indicates from afar that it is ‘poetic verse.’» The director made it clear that he was happy with the actors. «All the parts are played very well, both the main characters and the smaller roles, which are played by Costas Vassardanis, Dimitris Koutrouvideas and Electra Nikolouzou. Watching the work they did improvising and setting the acts, I told them that my job was to interfere as little as possible. They were like musical instruments in total harmony with a work’s tones and melodies. The only thing that I did was to create a world in which to place the story – the ’60s bar in Rome – which the actors unhesitatingly accepted and incorporated into what they were doing. Without any rush, they combined the play, the atmosphere of its time, the rhetoric and intensity of the words with the particular world of 1960s Rome.They are three lonely people stranded in a bar and there is also the barman, a wretched pianist playing Italian and French hits of that time, and the wardrobe lady. That particular space and time define the sets and the costumes.» The sets are by Lily Pezanou and the costumes by Lefteris Pavlopoulos. Amore Theater, 10 Pringiponnisson, tel 210.646.8009.
