No sign of a sparkle in this Aegean
Given its many woes, Greece should be fertile territory for dramatists, but there have been slim pickings. Could it be that playwrights here are reluctant to grasp the nettle of the EU and the stinging failures of the euro? Are they so used to having a go at the old easy scapegoats like capitalism, nationalism and US imperialism that they’re bereft of ideas?
Alexi Kaye Campbell’s disappointing new play, set on the island of Skiathos, gives the cynics ample ammunition. Campbell was born in Athens to a Greek father and English mother. He can claim valuable ties but Sunset at the Villa
Thalia lacks the strong stamp of authenticity. Heaping blame for Greece’s post-war problems on the acquisitiveness and interference of outsiders, it at once exonerates the Greeks and reduces them to sketchy, sidelined figures.
Like his 2008 breakthrough The
Pride, contrasting the circumstances of gay men in England in the late Fifties and the present-day, the piece encompasses two periods: 1967, with the onset of the repressive “Regime of the Colonels”, and 1976, a few years after the transition to democracy.
Aspiring English playwright Theo and his wife Charlotte (Sam Crane, Pippa Nixon) are initially holidaying at a ramshackle but picturesque cottage by the sea. They host a soirée for an older American couple they’ve met by chance: Harvey (Ben Miles), who roves the world for the CIA and his ditzy spouse, June (Elizabeth McGovern).
Harvey, assertive and hawkish, tells his new friends they should snap the place up; the owners, on the verge of emigrating, will sell it for a song. Despite misgivings from Charlotte, the deal is done and – kerching! – the news comes through about the military coup.
You can allow a playwright some leeway on dramatic artifice, poetic licence and conversational exposition, but Campbell draws on our funds of indulgence ’til there’s nowt left in the bank.
The set design by Hildegard Bechtler may make you yearn for the Aegean, but I’d have settled for anywhere other than the NT and this turkey.
Until Aug 4. Tickets: 020 7452 3000; nationaltheatre. org.uk