DATE AND VENUE

22, 23.05.2000, 20.30, Ses Theatre

ORTAOYUNCULAR

• Written by: Anton Chekhov
• Directed by: Ferhan Şensoy

“So what is a comedy? From Aristophanes’ plays to Hollywood’s silliness, everything can be a part of this dusty time-worn trunk called comedy. Isn’t Jean Genet’s nightmarish dream-world in this trunk? Hasn’t Boris Vian irritatingly taken his place at the bottom of the trunk? Bertolt Brecht is sitting on the hinge of its lid, playing the guitar! It’s a tattered old trunk, and Pierre-Henri Cami is woodworm secretly gnawing away on it. Those who define “comedy” in an American way have found a folder for it labelled “works where the heroes have a happy ending.” Can’t an unhappy ending be funny? Doesn’t the face of the goal -keeper who has just conceded a goal, with its expression first like a sputtering bird that has lost its voice, and then later is washed in schizophrenic stillness once the “happy ending” has been accepted, make you laugh? No one achieves a happy ending in this “cherry orchard” film. All of the characters, Ms. Ranevskaya, Lopahin, and First, see a goal slip past their-well protected goal-posts among the cherry trees.”F.Ş.