Art & Culture

The Trial of Manos Hatzidakis & The Censorship Office

Two Kambanellis one-acters in a stone village theatre near Kolymvari. Free, in Greek, starts 21:30.

Two short Iakovos Kambanellis pieces in one evening, staged by the Friends of Theatre of Chania and directed by Nasos Athanasopoulos. The first restages a mock trial published in Ta Nea in June 1963, in which Nikos Gkatsos presided and Odysseas Elytis prosecuted, over the statue of Truman planted in central Athens a hundred metres from Hatzidakis's own front door. The second, The Censorship Office, Kambanellis wrote during the junta after what the censors did to his Great Circus in 1973; it went unpublished until after his death, and his daughter Katerina entrusted it to this company, who gave it its Greek premiere in 2014. The venue is worth the drive on its own: a small stone open-air theatre in Agios Antonios, in the hills south of Kolymvari, named after the actor Alexis Minotis, who was born a few kilometres away in Deliana. Free entry, performed in Greek.