Famous actor Peter Ustinov, with his sarcastic humor, said that if the Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli were alive today, he would work for Vogue.

The truth is that we cannot bring the great personalities of the past into our time. But returning to them, we see that half a millennium ago people behaved in exactly the same way, had the corresponding illusions, fears and desires.

Then, as now, there was ambition, frustration, populist leaders, and even what we would today call a culture of cancellation. For the same reason, the play “Botticelli on Fire”, staged last weekend at the Shelter Theater (26 Melenikova St., Gazi, Votanikos), is indeed a reflection of the past in the present, as it captures the human soul energetically without changes inside in time.

This is a play written by the formidable offspring of Canadian theater Ottawa-born Jordan Tannahill, born in 1988, who has a gift for looking at the 21st century from the close perspective of a contemporary, but also from the distance his culture gives him. But why did he choose one of the most brilliant artists of the Renaissance as his hero?

Botticelli, who was gifted by God with everything from talent, beauty and voluptuousness to intelligence and public recognition thanks to the support of the powerful Medici family? A character who knew very well how to use all of the above, but died forgotten and underappreciated as an artist, only to be discovered by humanity centuries later.

Tannahill (who in this work develops the romance between Botticelli and da Vinci) takes us back to the time when the artist established himself, enjoyed high patronage, illustrated the Sistine Chapel and discovered Neoplatonism.

But the city is overwhelmed by a plague epidemic (see pandemic), and the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola accuses the Medici of their immoral life and lights a “bonfire of vanity” in the central square of Florence, where books, paintings, sculptures, musical instruments are burned. Savonarola manages to turn the masses against the elite. The artist sees the world that he has known so far, degrading and crushed.

“Tannahill makes us think about what we are ready to sacrifice ourselves at a time when everything that supported us is gone from under our feet,” says director and protagonist of the show Christos Lygkas, who loves the Canadian writer and puts the work in Athens. a second time. He is joined on stage by Alkis Delantonis, Nikos Gialelis, Gerasimos Mavros, Maria Branidou, Miltos Samaras, Thassos Chrysopoulos. Dramaturgical editing and co-direction – Michaela Antóniou.