ephemera

aktorpoet.com/ephemera (microblog)

 To the city's national theatre for a farce by the 19th c. national playwright.  ($6, balcony)  I've seen this playwright's work in three cities, and it's very different in each of them.  Shades of Hoffmann's short story Donna Anna at points.  The standard line is that this playwright isn't political at all, but that received idea was developed during the dictatorship; this is clearly a very interesting allegory of 19th c. constitutionalism, along with an authorial type (the playwright was a newspaperman and politically influential) who gets a bit roughed up in the course of things.  It's not unreasonable to think that the 19th c. political fights here had an element of physical menace to them; perhaps there was some back-story there.  

The style is much broader here than in the capital or at the university festivals, but the reason that it's broad is that generations of audience memebers have imprinted themselves upon it appreciatively, and perhaps even gratefully.  Watch a national playwright's work in his or her home country carefully, and you will have before you a small group of people trying to tell you absolutely everything (and quite possibly succeeding in the attempt).