The official premiere of Brokeback Mountain took place on Friday 08 November 2024, at the renovated Knosos Theater (11 Knosos Street, Kypseli). Director Konstantinos Rigos is staging for the first time in Greece the theatrical adaptation by Ashley Robinson of Annie Proulx’s short story.

Moviegoers will remember the film adaptation of the story by master director Ang Lee and the heartbreaking performances of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. This is the film that won Ang Lee an Oscar for directing, while the screenplay and music by Gustavo Santaolalla also won an Oscar each.

As in the 2005 film, the de-dramatization of the western genre, the exploration of new visual and aesthetic possibilities through it and the use of music play a primary role in the stage adaptation. The dramaturgy revolves around two young men in their twenties, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, who meet in a seasonal employment agency. The two end up in the remote Wyoming mountains as ranchers and a love romance develops between them. The wild, bucolic landscape of America, as in ancient Greek poetry, will provide a fitting backdrop for this love story (as the isolation will bring the two men closer together), revealing both hidden feelings of the protagonists and darker aspects of the morals of the time. The light-heartedness of the first part, with the sexual urge unfolding in its full extent before the spectator’s eyes, will give way to a realistic second act, where now the characters are confronted with the oppression of traditional societies and the banality of the American dream of a settled life. Again passion, like the wild snowstorms of Brokeback Mountain, erupts, reminding us that it is an integral part of (human) nature.

With an original scenographic approach, based on the combination of video projections (perhaps an element that will tire the eyes of some viewers) and simple objects on stage, Konstantinos Rigos, as an important representative of contemporary choreography, boldly and with absolute knowledge directs the bodies of his two protagonists, Dimitris Kapouranis and Michael Tabakakis, in a work that exposes before the audience both the occult parts of their bodies and their souls. Dimitris Kapetanakos also achieves an extraordinary feat in a triple (!) performance, in which he plays diametrically opposed characters of the disparate gallery of personalities of the American West.

In general, both the nature of the play and Robinson’s adaptation and the theme of the “doomed romance” touches the audience regardless of sexual preference, and thus the emotion of the heroes communicates with the orchestra. At the same time, the songs of Dan Gillespie Sells and the on-stage presence of musicians (Kostas Sidirokastritis – acoustic guitar, percussion, Yannis Panigirakis – electric guitar, Giorgos Kostopoulos – double bass) transport us to the climate of the American countryside, where behind the popular fiesta and the familiar still lurk conservatism and intolerance.