Theatre Reviews

Abstract

In March 2018 King John was staged in Greece after thirteen years; it was the second time the play was ever performed in the country. The first time was in 2004-2005, by Theatro tou Notou at the Amore Theatre, directed by Nikos Chatzopoulos in his own translation. For the 2018 production the director Apostolis Psarros also used Chatzopoulos’s translation, which is undoubtedly the best existent translation of the play in Greek. Apostolis Psarros made various alterations to the text. However, his cuts did not change the story or character of the play, and a few comical additions did not harm it, since the play itself includes a great deal of comical scenes. In fact, both of the other productions of the play that I can recall, that is, Chatzopoulos’s at the Amore, but also Greg Doran’s at the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2001, stressed this comical essence of the play. In Psarros’s production it took four actors (Irene Ioannou, Panagiotis Iossifidis, Nicoletta Panagiotou and the director himself) to perform the whole play. This also added to the comical character of the show, since several actors played two or three parts at the same time: the director himself played both kings, or King John and Hubert; Nicoletta Panagiotou played both Eleanor and Constance; Panagiotis Iossifidis at some point played three parts together (Pandolf, the Dauphin and the Bastard). However, the parts were very clear, thanks to the admirable energy of the actors, which enabled them to make amazingly quick role shifts. In the beginning of the show, assuming that the Greek audience’s knowledge of English history was most probably rather meager, Iossifidis gave a brief summary of what happens in the play, and subsequently asked the spectators questions on the plot, to see if they got it. The characters were