Wake up, Vassilis Dimitris Psathas
ZILLER BUILDING - STAGE "NIKOS KOURKOULOS"
Dimitris Psathas’s caustic socio-political critique of the game that money plays with every ideology is also a hilarious and skilfully constructed comedy. Psathas, a much beloved writer for both theatre and cinema, wrote an astute and timeless satire in which his pen skewers the opportunism of fanatics of every ideological stripe in Greek society.
While remaining faithful to his own very distinctive theatrical approach, Aris Biniaris finds a characteristically inventive way of bringing the atmosphere of the sixties to the stage, probing beyond the idealised image of the era in the collective unconscious. With a contemporary eye, he decodes the distinctive register of a writer who talks about serious issues while delivering laughs with a punch to the stomach, and shows how the play is relevant to today. We thus see a twentieth-century play – that was adapted into one of Greek cinema's most entertaining films – in a new light.
In the offices of Farlakos Publishing, the politically conservative Vassilis clashes with Manos, a progressive, over working conditions but also the content of the books they publish. The flashpoint for their intellectual dispute is the poet Fanfaras and his stridently conservative works. However, it is not long before fortune causes the political convictions of the two partners to change amidst the most trying of circumstances. But which of them will manage to adapt to the morality and spirit of the new era?