Delphi and the road to Thebes
DELPHI – The Theban Cycle, that inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists and thinkers everywhere, is the subject of the 11th International Meeting on Ancient Greek Drama which started Friday at the European Cultural Center of Delphi (ECCD) and runs until Friday. With the emphasis very much on an interdisciplinary approach, the meeting has attracted directors, writers, critics, designers, psychoanalysts, and classicists from Greece and abroad. In addition to performances of or inspired by ancient drama, the meeting offers readings, papers, discussions and workshops by directors Theodoros Terzopoulos and Michalis Cacoyannis and an exhibition of Jannis Kounellis’s work for the theater. The presentations on the Theban myths have been well-attended, but often run over time, leaving little or no room for discussion, to the disappointment of some participants. By contrast, discussions of the plays are scheduled for the morning after each performance, an innovation for the Delphi meeting. At first, unwilling to offend or fearing that even well-intentioned criticism may not be well-received, participants were reluctant to publicly voice reservations they were more than willing to share in private. But inhibitions disappeared after the performance of Wole Soyinka’s «Oyedipo at Kolhuni,» which met with largely negative reception. After all, productive discussion is what the Delphi meeting is all about. The first performances The National Theater premiered a lackluster production of Sophocles’ «Antigone» on Friday. Though director Niketa Kontouri was at pains to explain that the production was still in preparation, most of the shortcomings, apart from poor timing and missed cues, had little to do with lack of rehearsal. The absence of any clear directorial perception of the play made for a long and unrewarding evening on some exceptionally hard seats. Without any unifying vision, the set, music, costumes and even the individual performances sometimes appeared to belong to separate productions. Lydia Koniordou, a talented actor with a tendency to overplay, did not get the strong direction she needs. Moving into top gear almost at once, her Antigone soon had nowhere to go. At the other end of the scale, Sophocles Peppas played Creon as one of the boys, a strict but not unkindly man, along the lines of a party boss constrained to take firm measures. His eventual change of heart makes him sympathetic, but never the stuff of tragedy or, as some would have it, the hero of the play. The gabardine-clad chorus, slumped about on chairs, didn’t sing or dance but greeted every plot development in uniformly glum fashion. There was no incentive here to ponder the workings of fate or humanity’s conflicting duties to gods and kin. In fact two scorpions that invaded the theater aroused more pity and terror than the entire production. Of greater interest was Olia Lazaridou’s performance on Saturday as Evadne, widow of the fighter Capaneus in «Seven Sonnets for Thebes – First Sonnet: Evadne.» A soliloquy based on classical and modern texts and a traditional lament from the Mani, and performed to the accompaniment of music composed by Nikos Xydakis, it successfully met some of the challenges posed by the smaller of the two new, prefabricated theaters. Hacked out of the hillside, the stage is a long narrow space, very hard to fill convincingly. «Evadne» relied heavily on lighting effects. Occasionally banal, picking out trees or shrubs in the distance, they also provided exceptional moments, highlighting the formidable mountain in the background, or filling a tomb-like cavity in the hillside with what looked like liquid blue at the moment of Evadne’s self immolation. Overloaded Most disappointing was Wole Soyinka’s adaptation of Sophocles’ «Oedipus at Colonus,» written at the request of the ECCD. Unfortunately, «Oyedipo at Kolhuni» did not live up to the standard of Soyinka’s successful adaptation of «The Bacchae.» The largely amateur cast from the Nevada Conservatory Theater, whose eagerness never outweighed their inexperience, was not to blame. The work itself simply had to bear too much weight. Linking the ancient myth with the true contemporary story of Afghan refugees refused asylum by the Australian government, Soyinka overloaded the play with detail and explanations in his desire to explain all and right past wrongs. During rehearsals another director might have stripped away the verbal clutter, found better things for the chorus to do than hang about on stage in peculiar costumes, and taken the work back to the great questions Sophocles poses. But the playwright made the mistake of directing his own show, losing sight of what would actually work on stage. In its present shape, the play is unintentionally comical, but severe pruning and an independent director might reveal a drama worth watching.