BELOVED FAMILY (2013)
Staged at:
2018: Psychikon Theatre Society (dir.: Apostolos Fteinos)
2018: SYNTHESIS Theatre Group, Ioannina
Cast: 7 (4 women, 3 men)
A once-famous theatre company has lost it all, money and reputation. The company members are Jean the director; Adrianne, his former love and forever lead actress; Evanthoula, an avant-garde drama zealot; Vladimir, a veteran street artist; and Vivi, a young bimbo actress and Jean’s latest love conquest. Jean is a gambler and makes the mistake to borrow money from the Italian Mafia, yet cannot pay them back. In order to save his life, he promises them a grand cabaret production for the 100-year-anniversary of La Famiglia and starts rehearsing on this project with his actors who, however, know nothing of the Mafia agreement. Things get complicated: the actors’ aesthetics and relationships become perplexed, the extra-conservative head of the Parish threatens to seal the theatre for obscene spectacles, and a tax officer wants to close them down for unpaid debts. In his despair, Jean tells everyone what they wish to hear: he promises a stage adaptation of Noah’s Arc to the head of the Parish, and promises the tax officer to stage his girlfriend’s (horrible) new children’s play. Unfortunately, farcical misunderstanding brings all three different audiences to the theatre on the same day and Jean’s fraud is revealed one minute before the curtain rises. Jean escapes and loses all trust and love of his actors who, unlike him, decide not to abandon the stage and play …whatever, believing in the magic of theatre. And magic does work, for Jean re-enters the stage in role to share humiliation with his “beloved family”. The bond between them becomes so strong that they pull this through in an excellent performance because what really matters “is the light of the stage”.
