Cafe Rebetika!
Full Tilt @ The Arts Centre,
Fairfax Studio
Melbourne, Victoria
23rd April 2009, 8pm
(2nd preview)
I am white, and often feel that somehow I am strangely at a loss because of it in Australia. I was born in Scotland and feel a strong connection to this heritage – my mother is South African but i don’t feel South African. Identity is something I have wrestled with for long time, to feel the richness of tradition and depth of cultural practice. There has been a movement in Aussie art that embraces the mongrel – even just the title of curatorial team Quarterbred is a perfect example. Where do we belong, how do we belong?
I struggle sometimes with works that are stories of a specific community or migrant tales, If these works are well done they can really be some of the most gut wrenching, moving experiences you will ever witness. If they are mishandled they have the possibility to turn into a swampy nostalgia-fest which only the members of that community will understand.
I guess the question is – is the creation of art for everyone or can it just be for some people? I make art which is seen by very few people so it would be hypocritical of me to really go to town on this point. Indeed, my own ‘cultural community’ would be very small if you added them up – they would appear miniscule compared to say the Greek Community.
Which brings me to Cafe Rebetika! a Full Tilt supported production at the Arts Centre, Melbourne.
This production has been through a series of developments, script adjustments, casting changes since its inception by Director/co-writer Stephen Helper and co-writer/collaborator Thomas Papathannassiou. I saw an early development which included the music and a moved reading by the performers maybe 2 years ago. To my surprise the majority of the narrative and the songs had remained intact from that time, the major changes I could see was in the casting.
Rebetis or Rebeti stems from a 1930′s Greek term meaning ‘outcast’ – and the majority of the characters are set in a cafe which houses prostitutes, pimps, drug takers and criminals. It is historically a fascinating time – There are refugees from Smyrna (A greek enclave inside Turkey) whom have been living in Athens after the horrific destruction of the Greek Orthodox part of the City by the surrounding Turks. The Smyrnans took with them back to Greece a hybridised music culture called Rebetika which draws on influences from greece, turkey, the balkans, the middle east and beyond. Into this mix is also thrown a rising clash between fascist and communist elements inside Greece reflecting a broader battle taking place all over Europe.
As with the Weimar republic in Germany of the same period somehow with these amazing times comes a culture like no other – decadent, brimming with possibilities, open with intellectual thinking and accepting of broad cultural influences.
What actually happened in the show is very simple – there was a death of a Smyrnan girlfriend of a man at the hands of her violent husband. As the society begins to shift, the times of the rebeti is coming to end and so too does the cosy world of the cafe.
For a work that is 2 1/2 half hours long there is a lot of what seems like padding – the kind that musical theatre involves itself in -where songs are sung for the point of singing them and not to move the narrative forward. And here is where for me the issue lies for this production, In trying to relay an entire culture and time period to an audience somehow the story has had to have been collapsed down into somehting simple and readable, the characters become cyphers for particular types in the society – The Manga, the prostitute, the drug-taker, the heroin addict, the communist, the policeman, the Smyrnan lover, the bad guy.
Having said this – the performances were all great – all added an authenticity to the piece that was needed. The only performance I felt let down by was the character of Areti, which was unfortunate considering she was such a pivotal person within the proceedings of the story. I didn’t feel the heat of passion between her and Stavraka??? the power of two strong characters colliding. And the bond of sisterhood between the three female characters didn’t seem as strong as i had seen in the previous incarnation. Perhaps this was due to there being a new actor in the role playing alongside actors who had been living in the skins of these characters for years.
The music was the key part to this production the thing that bound the characters together and also the production as a whole. Such is the power for these tunes is that i remembered the music, remembered the hooks in them. I also could hear the audience humming and singing along to the songs as they were played so these songs have become part of the greater Greek culture as well. I wonder indeed if some of the families of migrants are descendants of this culture?
In the end as each figure in the story left the cafe – the audience is left with the character of Fofo, the young female worker inside the cafe. Here was a young woman wanting to learn, to move herself forward and by the end she becomes somehow the future of the Rebetikan movement. That through her the ideas and culture is carried onto the next generation through writing and verbally.
And that is why this work is important, in the end my attempt to deconstruct it on my terms through the prism of my experiences doesn’t mean anything when you put that up against the importance of reliving a culturally rich period in the history of a country. Much like Fofo, this production carries on the things that are powerful about Rebetika music and the people of 1930′s Greece.
