Love in the Time of Crisis

RiSko Theatre Company brings to the Greek audience Catalan playwright Josep María Miró’s reflection of the world in a raindrop, Nerium Park, a psychological thriller that brilliantly investigates the nuts and bolts of a couple as well as today’s social paranoia, weaving a dramatic web so thick that represents a challenge for any actor.

 

 

«Gerard and Marta, a young couple, buy their first apartment in a complex of newly built dwellings, “Nerium Park”, on the outskirts of the city where they both live and work. The couple, who has been together for nine years, seems to find in their new apartment the ideal place to create the family they dream of. But is that the way things truly are? The initial excitement subsides very quickly, and fear, insecurity and madness ensue». From this brief abstract, it is hard to understand the level of dramatic textuality that Josep Marí Miró managed to pour into Nerium Park’s every word, offering to the reader a whirling verbal duel between the main characters, a fight for survival that requires an extremely steady directorial hand and a keen critical eye to be transferred onto the scene in a credible fashion.

Indeed, actorial-wise, the parabolic development of Gerard’s character – a seemingly optimistic white-collar hubby turned unemployed couch potato in the blink of an eye – is a true challenge both for body language (that cannot be stereotyped with nervous pacing and even more nervous fiddling if verisimilitude is sought) and psychological breakdown (again, easily mistaken for petty tantrums if done with inconclusive lightness), paralleled only by the even more demanding role of Marta – a careerist with a conscience, a byproduct of social mistrust policies, ultimately another brick in the wall – who has to fill all the voids left gaping by her shadow of a partner. It is on this theatrical tightrope that a clash of values takes place, a struggle in which love gives in to the circumstances and the façade of modern stability comes crumbling down, built as it is on nothing but fleeting whims and toxic inequalities, toxic as the nerium oleander which entangles and suffocates every new building and road in this highly metaphorical building complex on the outskirts of civilization.

A powerful play, needed in our times as it talks directly to all those of us who walk down life enchanted by the corporate sirens’ call offering safety, continuity and meaning, unable to see that their path is a downward spiral headed into bleakness and anguish. A complex play that needs mastery in dramaturgy, direction and interpretation to succeed, something that seems to lack tremendously in riSko Theatre Company’s adaptation for the Curtain Theatre, where on a simple scene lit by simple lights, two actors fall over and over into simple traps laid down by a simplistic rendering of the Catalan original.


The show was played at
Curtain Theatre (Θέατρο Αυλαία)
Dialetti 7 street – Thessaloniki
from 5 to 25 February 2018
21.00

riSko Theatre Company presents
Nerium Park – Νέριουμ Παρκ
by Josep María Miró

direction Vangelis Economou
translation Els de Paros (Yannis Mantas, Alexandros Baveas, Maria Hadjiemmanouil, Dimitris Psarras)
set Danae Panas
costumes Christina Manola
music editing Tasos Peltekis
lighting Stratos Koutrakis
cast Angela Boltsi, Giorgos Vergoulis
photos Christina Voulgari
teaser Sideris Nanoudis
poster photo Thanos Kostikos
poster design Mariantis Vezertzis
public relations & contact Damigou Elena
coproduction Curtain Theater – riSko Theatre Company