Trip to Ancient theater of EpidaurusI thought about “Helen“. Not like a production of KTHBE, whose last year’s Athens and Epidaurus festival tour was delayed by devastating fires, and not like the man the Greeks blamed for all the disasters caused by the Trojan War, but like a school memory. In the 3rd gymnasium “Elena” Euripides was nothing more than a timetable lesson that had no competition in boredom.

According to Euripides, only the idol of Helen traveled to Troy. Hera ordered Hermes to kidnap her and send her to King Proteus in Egypt. After his death, his son Theoklimen wants to marry her. However, she wants to find Menelaus, with whom they reunite and develop a plan to escape from the country of the Nile.

In a simple environment with pyramids and palm trees, which, together with the soil of the orchestra, resembles a desert, Vasilis Papavasiliou “plays” with the comedy-tragedy of Euripides and presents it in a subversive and completely new form, firmly stepping on the smooth translation of Pantelis Bukala. OUR Emily Koliandris like Helena, who sings of her suffering in bizarre tones and deftly plans her escape with the villain Menelaus, played with intense comedy by Themis Panu, they acrobat between fun and drama, at times drifting away from the former.

But why not get carried away? In addition, the orchestrations of Giorgos Doussos, which sometimes accompany the feast taken from Kustuurica’s film, and sometimes silently accompany what torments the souls of the heroes, a well-coordinated dance of 15 people in the costumes of Angelos Mentis and Agoritsa Oikonomou, who outshines the applause like Theonoi fortune teller leaves no room for improvement. They are duly complemented by Efi Stamouli in her brief role as Gerontissa and Angelos Buras as Messenger II, who tells Theoclymenes how Helena deceived him, receiving applause from around 11,000 spectators, Greeks and foreigners, along with the rest of the cast. On the way back to Athens, I thought about the power of the theater to destroy prejudice. At least for some people, why comments like “Epidaurus is not a jewel” or “but is it possible to stage an ancient tragedy in the midst of laughter and celebration?” they didn’t disappear. This is also an opinion, I guess.