Rude Talk in Athens by Mark Haskell Smith

Author:Mark Haskell Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2021-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

I feel for Aristophanes, and I can relate—who hasn’t felt misunderstood and underappreciated? But can you imagine Martin Scorsese having an actor stop in the middle of his new film to lambaste the audience because the director didn’t win the Oscar for his last film? No. You cannot. But that is exactly what Aristophanes is doing.

When you read the parabasis on the page, it feels like a list of demands, the affect somewhat flat, like a video made by a kidnapper. But in the unhinged and brilliant parabasis of Clouds as directed by Karantzas, the chorus—the plushies, drag queens, supermodels, etcetera—careen and cavort around the stage at maximum volume, like escaped circus performers, turning Aristophanes’s complaints into a ferocious and highly entertaining rant and rumble. Karantzas had added some in-jokes for the audience, including a hilarious moment when one of the chorus removed a coin from her purse and silenced the crowd so we could hear “the legend of Epidaurus.” More than nine thousand people became weirdly silent, and then she dropped the coin on the marble disk at the center of the stage. If the subsequent cheer was anything to go by, you really could hear it all the way at the top of the theater.

The parabasis was, for me anyway, the highlight of the production.

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