A Piece from Greece AFTERTHOUGHT IN ATHENS
By JOHN WELLS
DOOMED by the Lady Palmist of Seaton Carew to cross the water, I found myself last Tuesday evening on the time-worn steps of the Acropolis. The air was heavy and still full of heat, and the sun was going down like beaten gold in a rose- purple haze beyond Piraeus: a 'few people were standing about or squatting on rocks talking quietly in French or German or Ameri- can—`But it has such perfect perportions. You know, I have simply fallen in love with Greece, George'—and down beneath us the city was turning to a warm sandstone glow as the light left it. Looking up towards the Parthenon, still dominant in sun-yellow stone against the blue- green evening sky, I was just about to go through the little iron gate and wander poetically over the still-warm flagstones, indulging in inac- curate musings on the ancient past, when a brown hand was laid on my arm.
The man was wearing a peaked cap and had a neatly-clipped black moustache. He waved his hand wearily over the sunset: 'Is dust.' I looked back towards the sea. 'No, is cloase. Ferme. Is sut.' I then saw a notice saying that the gates were closed at dusk, regretted my frail grasp of Greek and chronic disorganisation, thanked him and began to walk back down the hill again.
I followed a narrow and dusty path leading down under the olive trees, with little mushroom- shaped green metal lamps and the soft screech- ing of crickets, and came out in front of the Herodes Atticus Theatre, the semi-ruinous building at the foot of the hill. The gold disc of the sun had now broken in half in the west, and the light was fading fast. A tall, stooping American in a blue jacket was buying tickets at a little window in the wall, and, having nothing better to do, I followed his example. I later discovered that I had bought a seat for the Bucharest Opera Ballet's performance of Swan Lake.
I arrived at the theatre just as the last gong was sounded and the lights went down in the steep arena. The entrance being beside the stage,
I had to brush past the chorus who were sitting along the edge of it, the men dressed in skull- caps and white beards, the women in nuns' head- dresses, and all wearing long costumes of faded blue and black. The effect, as they sat motion- less, looking straight out in front of them, and lit.from below.by the lights of the orchestra pit, was strikingly dramatic, and, it occurred to-me as I climbed up with other latecomers to the back of the theatre, strangely Greek in mood for a production of Swan Lake, even by the Bucharest Opera Ballet. Also, the music of the overture, played by a large orchestra in the semi- circular area in front of the stage, seemed a little modern and discordant for Tchaikovsky. My suspicions were first really aroused, however, When the lights came up on the stage to reveal a number of girls in flimsy white muslin costumes, with silver bands in their hair, dancing about in front of a King and Queen on thrones, apparently celebrating some form of religious rite.
This dance continued for some time, inter- spersed with harsh choral comments from the seated choristers. After this, a number of frankly effeminate men in white mini-skirts and in various stages of sunburn came prancing in, their leader attempting to mime colourfully to a flute being played in the orchestra. An elderly sage, in floor-length white garments and a lustrous beard, was then led on by what was either a very elderly child or an operatic dwarf, and sang various remarks of such obvious offensiveness—I was uncertain what language they were singing in;
I assume it was Rumanian, but it could equally well at times have been Yiddish or Norman French—that the King, a man with fat legs in a red cloak, fell to the ground with exaggerated gestures of horror, and all the virgins ex- tinguished their antique torches with a series of unco-ordinated clicks.
The second act found the King alone in a dark landscape, with a single papier mache rock and a lit cloud-effect moving over the ruined wall that forms the back of the amphitheatre. Lightning flickered at the broken stone windows, and three men rushed on to the stage. The King faced them, sang one note, and then flung himself upon them, bopping each of them with a blow from his rather flimsy club in a series of heavy balletic sweeps, and then fled from the stage. A servant ran in, stooped over the bodies, sang the word 'molt,' or it could have been 'Mord,' and then hurried away into the wings,
his sandals creaking on the canvas-covered floor. My mystification was complete when two men in black trousers and black shirts came on to move the papier mache rock and revealed the King, looking if anything fatter than before, singing in a high falsetto voice. It was some moments before I realised that the King was merely listening energetically, and that the voice itself came 'from one of the ladies of the chorus.
During the interval 1 bought a programme. Swan Lake had been the night before. What I had been watching was Oedipus Rex, by Enesco.
I returned to another seat, higher up in the marble-faced and rather hard arena, humbled at my abysmal ignorance and marvelling at the genius of the geometrician who thought of so simple an idea for seating 5,000 people in such a small space and all so close to the stage. I decided to concentrate on enjoying the second half for itself alone. Almost immediately the lights on the music stands in the orchestra pit went out. The blind soothsayer, caught in mid-aria, peered into the darkness, but was unable to see the conductor, and the performance stopped, leaving the cast leaning on their spears in atti- tudes of bashful ennui. When a man in a white shirt had finally struggled through the close-packed musicians, pushed a harp out of the way, and mended the fault, I was completely on their side, and for the rest of the evening, with the corner of the Parthenon high above us on one side, and a white moon rising over Athens on the other, almost directly above the King, putting his eyes out down in the arena, I accepted it all, including the music, as beautiful, even when right at the end they festooned Oedipus's corpse with a huge chocolate-box bow of white muslin. I'm sure the Ancient Greeks would have done it that way.
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