Maeterlinck’s ‘Blue Bird’ review

I played the role of  Mytyl in Maeterlinck’s ‘Blue Bird’ at the YMCA in Thessaloniki back in 2005. Our Director was Achilleas Psaltopoulous, bless his soul. 

I found the review I had written then for the play and Mr. Psaltopoulos had it printed in the play's programme. <3 And I thought to translate it:

Maeterlinck’s ‘Blue Bird’ is a journey in search of happiness that leads to quite depressive conclusions. In this work the author very skilfully hides his pessimism, which in his previous works is overt.

Thus, Maeterlinck’s most optimistic creation concludes that happiness is elusive, or at least ephemeral. It is nothing but a search for a Chimera, which always ends in a dream that fades in the morning, like a bird that loses its colour as soon as it enters a cage.

While here the playwright grasps the deepest meaning of human value, the need for freedom, as the supreme happiness that is not imprisoned, he does not stand on this truth, expecting the viewer to discover it for himself, in a work that is otherwise only explanatory.

The Light functions as the ‘god from a machine’ of the ancient Greek theatre, representing the Knowledge of the World and of ourselves, overemphasizing the dangers of pleasure, demystifying the Joys and all Happinesses, flooded with ‘fears and shadows’, which bow before its dogmatic supremacy. A Light that nevertheless is unable to know exactly where the Blue Bird is.

Trapped within the moralistic ‘oughts’, where the idealization of suffering dominates, puritanism in the name of morality and justice, Maeterlinck places happiness in an increasingly distant future and man in a world that wants to annihilate him.

In his ignorance, man chooses his actions before he is born, still unable to distinguish good from evil, to end up after his death in a form of existence that depends only on the memories of those left behind.

An ignorance in which he is condemned to remain, without having the right to know who the Blue Forms are in the kingdom of the future, who will take his place on Earth after him, and of course without having any idea when and why he must give them this place. An ignorance, which alone can protect him from the hostile feelings of Nature, in the forest scene.

Finally, the Blue Bird is in the palace of the Night, or is it the one on the Oak Tree? Maybe it simply does not exist.

However, the Blue Bird does not fail to entrust us with the mission of finding it, so that we can be happy, in a distant ‘later’.

 

Friday, June 3, 2005