By Cathy H. Burroughs, International Travel Writer & Adventure Blogger, journeyPod.com
Only in Greece would you drive more than two hours through perilous Peloponnesian mountains to a perfectly preserved ancient amphitheater with pretechnology impeccable acoustics, joining nearly 15,000 fully engaged audience members of all ages. There we were held under the spell of both the theater, itself, filled nearly to capacity, suitable for a half stadium football match, and its current ultra-contemporary Aristophanes’s comedy The Frogs, originally from 405 BC, and in this iteration, FROGS, indelibly current.
For two plus hours without break, we sat, Spartan-like, unwavering, with frequent outbursts of laughter, approving applause and, by the end, collective clapping of true believers, on backless rock-hard stadium seating. All this under complete darkness, save the odd bat, cat and magical theatrical lighting as we witnessed this bawdy multi-layered and multi-dimensional remarkable revival.
Shockingly current political references gracefully and gleefully permeated the riotous take of this time-honored comedy. With live music by the performers themselves, this is a new, sometimes jarringly profane, edgy, vernacular and totally compelling translation that would have made Aristophanes proud, we think. It is about a God (Dionysus) and slave (played with enormous command by Lakis Lazopoulos) descending to Hades in search of a dramatic poet to save a city! I repeat for emphasis: a poet! As I say…..only in Greece!
As directed by the wonderful Costas Filippoglou and designed by a world-class team with subtitles in both Greek and English, this jocular and inventive version is a freshly-minted mix of newer New Vaudeville, comedia del arte, gender-bending Torch Song Trilogyesque cabaret, and circus pageantry. With a dazzle of fancy footwork, the remarkable multi-casted chorus in true Greek Chorus tradition delivers with such velocity and finesse that would throw shade at even Cirque du Soleil, sustaining its rowdy, high-energy, wildly-imaginative, rollicking bouyancy throughout. The ensemble par excellance sprints and slithers up and down the pyramid stage with feverish joi de vivre all whilst playing live instruments, working their farcical mimicry, performing acrobatic high jinks and exuding mad exuberance in a detailed and pyrotechnic sparkler and firefly display.
The company leads are all exceptional and all is done with original songs, a spell-casting, serpent-hissing siren, upwards, downward descending and tangoing choreograpghy, cacophonous frogs, and the culminating spy/versus spy poetry slam by both Euripedes and Aeschylus with the “old way,” ultimately taking home the prize. The final pass of soft shoe chorus line crescendo rounds out the night with pizzazzy exhaustion and loser innovator Euripedes’s closing toss: (paraphrased) “Good luck to him. People don’t change. How then can we save Athens?
All this creates a beguiling confection of raucously funky sound score and a night full of crackerjack performances of wit, astute social commentary and bewitching originality – all of which ultimately, and enthusiastically, won over even this seasoned seen-it-all contemporary theatergoer.
Held in both Athens and Epidaurus, this festival is an odyssey you must make if in Greece (how, ever, did the ancients make the lengthy journey to Epidaurus?) from June through August – for theater-lovers, festival-goers and both cultural and history aficionados worldwide. Now in its 6th triumphant year, thunderous kudos go to the multi-cultural festival organizers for this olympiadic, stellar and mammoth undertaking! The final week features the festival’s own production of Yannis Kokkos’ Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles.
Cathy H. Burroughs is an international theater and travel writer who studied, performed and wrote about many of the premiere experimental theater companies of the 70’s. She has covered such festivals as Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival; the U.S. Spoleto Festival, the newly-named Festival TransAmeriques; the Festival of Nouvelle Danse, both in Montreal, Canada; The New Dance Festival in Mulhouse, France, and many others. Additionally she was on the staff of Baltimore, Maryland’s The New Theater (TNT) Festival and helped produce her own Brave New Works, Montreal Choreographer Showcase, Power of the Moving Word, The Live Circuit International Exchange series, The New York/ Baltimore New Performance & Video Exchange, the PS 122 Avante-Garde-Arama also in Baltimore, and others. She was the director of The Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia and helped produce the Time Festival in Gent, Belgium and the Nott Dance Festival in Nottingham, UK, performing at The Baltimore Theatre Project and La Mama, Etc in New York City, among others. Her cultural articles have been widely published or commissioned by The Washington Post, High Performance, The Baltimore Sun, Dance Magazine, TheaterWeek, Backstage, and others.
