Review by Simon Jenner, June 7th 2025
A neon restaurant sign blinds what’s behind. Hoisted downstage by actor/director Mario Banushi it blazons Taverna Miresia : his eponymous 2023 piece involving 80 minutes of hallucinatory theatre. Taverna Miresia – Mario, Bella, Anastasia runs at the Coronet Theatre in collaboration with Theatro sti Sala till June 7th.
Photo Credit: Theofilos Tsimas
Marking the UK premiere of a work that’s toured over two years, the third of Banushi’s theatre pieces confirms him as a risen star of European theatre at just 27.
There might be a déja-vu moment for those frequenting the Coronet this year. It’s another white-tiled bathroom, enclosing a smaller space than the circular Coronet stage. After Riccardo Pippa’s Teatro dei Gordi Pandora, and Jon Fosse’s Einkvan, you’d be forgiven for thinking bathrooms and toilets were a Coronet feature. Sotiris Melanos’ set though is besieged, even overwhelmed by the dark. Like Pandora too it’s voiceless, save for wails of grief and snatches of radio. Melanos’ costumes take on moments of stark fetishism and outsize instruments of grief. This refraction of a family’s loss sheds a glaucous light. Quite literally in Eliza Alexandropoulou’s lighting design of detachable bulbs.
Taverna Miresia (“Restaurant of Kindness”), once lodged in the Albanian capital Tirana. The family moved to Greece though when Banushi was just six. Bansuhi himself appears first showering naked, unhurriedly drying and dressing. As framer of the story, almost the MC, he circles the others. His own nakedness lends a permission to what he asks of his cast. Thus five actors – Savina Yannatou, Chryssi Vidalaki, Katerina Kristo, Banushi, Eftychia Stefanou – hover round a rectangular earthen strip: a grave, out of which a jacket’s pulled up till the earth falls away from it. It’s a revenant moment, the jacket flung over one of the ancient wooden chairs: to be draped, flicked, loved, trashed by actors over 80 minutes. The three siblings of the title are joined by a step-mother and a woman of undetermined status.
This doesn’t address the rituals of grief and what seems re-enactments of abuse, self-abasement and family trauma as women file in and out. One drags herself along the floor wailing. A younger woman eats, is joined by another; whom she feeds: and who repeatedly spits back food into the other’s face till it’s sprayed green. Masochism, guilt, a dream? It’s painfully drawn-out beyond the bounds of possibility. The besmirched woman then showers clothed.
A woman apparently wants to pee, standing on scales: she removes garments revealing elaborate suspenders and is interrupted and stops, possibly not wanting to lose face to a non-relative. Another woman sits, peels a hard-boiled egg, takes a salt-cellar from her bag, casting shell fragments on the grave space. Its flick of disdain provokes rare laughter.
Nudity is evanescent: though the chiaroscuro lighting’s so dense the explicit is spared. Only Banushi is starkly lit. After one neon-blinding moment the grave sprouts a harvest of tares, and dimly lit, the actors smear themselves in earth and dance in Bachanalian frenzy. Pulsing, classically bassy but restrained music by Jeph Vanger is given a sound envelope by Kostas Michopoulos.
Grief, release and trauma at the death of a patriarch is clear: I gauged that before I read the notes. Much else though is oblique, a glimpse of possibilities, an occult take on the rituals of grieving and family dysfunction; as well as shared sorrow and mineral gleams of joy. There’s a break in the wintry sun falling in the space, where arched traditional windows admit soft peach=light. It’s like falling half-asleep, allowing subconscious narratives their play.
“At its heart was the father, cook and owner, who used to welcome customers every night. Years later Banushi, who now lives in Greece, took that sign from Tirana to Athens, placing it at the centre of the semi-autobiographical world he creates.” Thus the spitting of food by one sister acts like abuse, a kind of rejection of the other’s nurture. More, it’s theatre at an edge of permission: of actors, audience, presumably family. Good luck though with probing anything more literal.
Banushi is at the surgical edge of theatre too. The surreal and absurd act like hard prisms of amber through which a theatrical language and storytelling pass. Though circular and curated by that neon sign and Banushi himself, this mask of absurdism allows the near-unsayable its sway. Enormous trust has been placed in Banushi whose demands skirt cruelty. He’s no Ivo van Hove though. Susannah Clapp’s salutary “stop this” doesn’t apply. However exposed the actors are, Banushi places himself in headlights. That doesn’t cleanse the mud, disturbance and exposure of his cast; nor the uneasy status of the single male gaze. It does though confirm Banushi’s truth. Not even the world theatre powerhouse of the Coronet has hosted anything like this. Banushi must be seen.
Photo Credit: Theofilos Tsimas
