GREEK STREETS
Apple Tree Theatre
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It comes as no surprise that Petrakis’s stories are wonderful read aloud. In fact, in the foreword to his Collected Stories he even admits that he relishes reading his short stories to “high school, college, library and club audiences.” Nor should it surprise anyone that Petrakis’s words translate nicely to the stage.
In large part, this is because Petrakis’s work is fresh and compelling. His stories are strong, with tight structures and definite beginnings, middles, and ends. “The Song of Rhodanthe,” for example, about a dreamy 27-year-old “spinster” who falls in love with a mysterious stranger, is so well constructed it could pass for a classic fairy tale. Similarly, Petrakis’s characters in “Rosemary” are so strong and well defined that they carry the story, in which a tired, broke cook befriends a lonely woman who comes into his diner near closing time. Even when Petrakis comes perilously close to rehashing cultural stereotypes, as he does in “The Wooing of Ariadne,” he has enough wit and sense to mock the stereotypes–in this case, a lively Zorba-like Greek male woos a woman as shrewish and difficult as Hera.
The character of Zorba has degenerated as his manifestations increase. In the novel he’s an enigmatic, hedonistic, unpredictable, endlessly fascinating character; in the movie, as played by Anthony Quinn, he’s the energetic, sloppy, eternally gregarious symbol of the Greek peasant temperament; and in the Apple Tree production, Peter Siragusa depicts him as a very hammy Zero Mostel.
Kahn’s Niko is so unruffled and self-contained you never believe for a minute he’s on a spiritual journey. Just as you never really believe that in the real world he’d give a dirty, loud, unshaven, eccentric peasant like Zorba a second look.
