Europa's Pledge / Le Serment d' Europe [play review]

As a child, "Europa" committed an unforgivable war crime. In penitence, she decided to give birth to eighteen children so that she could kill them with her own hands. Nevertheless, she ended up sparing three, because abandoning became more painful than killing, at some point. Now "Assia", a UN diplomat, has finally tracked down Europa and is trying to get her testimony about the events of the war she witnessed as a child, since Europa is the sole remaining survivor of that war. Europa's only condition: Find my three daughters and bring them to me. Then I will talk.

On a breezy and not-too-hot August summer evening, I embarked on a journey to the ancient Epidaurus theater, where, alongside thousands of other spectators, I saw the latest play by Lebanese-Canadian writer and director Wajdi Mouawad under the starry night.

Ancient theater of Epidaurus.

It is located within the archeological site of the Sanctuary of the god of Medicine, Asclepius

and has a maximum capacity of 13,000-14,000 spectators.

The location is key to understanding what creative forces molded the plot: The amphitheater of Epidaurus, built around 2,300 years ago and considered the most perfect -in terms of acoustics and aesthetics- ancient Greek theater, exclusively stages the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes or modern plays inspired by ancient Greek drama, during the annual Epidaurus Festival that takes place in July and August.

In other words, you will never see plays that are not heavily inspired by the format and thematology of ancient Greek theater there.

This is perhaps even more so the case for Europa's Pledge, a co-production between the Athens Epidaurus Festival and Théâtre National de La Colline, which was commissioned by the Festival.

Therefore, it is simply impossible NOT to judge the play as an assignment on ancient Greek theater both in practical terms (as a commission) and in spirit.

In this regard, the play is a failure in my opinion. It features heavy usage of graphic violence (more so narrated than depicted) but misses the causality principles embedded in ancient Greek tragedy, thus robbing the audience of a catharsis. Even worse, it is exactly because of the (commissioned) effort to stay in line with the ancient prototype, that the play manages to become atemporal in a negative way: it tries but fails to adhere to the ancient drama "logic", while its attempted symbols are also meaningless in a contemporary context. Ironically enough for a play that features three different languages on stage (French, Greek and English), it ends up being a play that doesn't quite speak any "language", either that of the mystical, filled with terrible gods and cursed bloodlines past or of the scientifically and legally construed present.

...But do not take my word for it.

Back to the script then: Who exactly is Europa?

There are two visual representations of Europa on stage; an eight year old child and an eighty three year old woman. They can see but not speak to each other, much like the old self acknowledges but can not speak of the crime the young self has committed.

© Theofilos Tsimas.

"I speak to you in a language you don't understand, and you remain silent in this language I no longer speak. Years have passed, and you are still that knife stuck in my throat.", says the old Europa to her younger, forever stuck at the age of her original trauma, self.

Like a knife in the throat then, the unspeakable crime she committed as an eight year old painfully haunts Europa and dictates all of her self-annihilating future actions.

But is that crime "reason" enough for all the horror that is to follow?

Seventy five years ago Europa's people, her tribe, were at war with Assia's (the UN diplomat now desperately looking for a testimony) tribe. During the conflict, an 8-year-old Europa alerted adults on her side that eighteen children from the enemy side were hiding at a school she herself had taken refuge in amidst the fighting. Frenzied by blood-lust and hatred, the overwhelmed by fanaticism male adults (a lot of them her blood relatives) then proceeded to unleash dogs that ripped apart and devoured the defenseless children in front of Europa's eyes. Afterwards, they dragged four women in that same classroom, forced them to undress and anally raped them for an hour while using their knives to enlarge their anuses. In the end Europa's relatives killed the women by tearing them open from throat to vagina, while spitting on them and mockingly telling them to "go meet their god". Europa witnessed all of this.

Gruesome and absolutely despicable as this is, incidents like it are known to happen in armed conflicts and if nothing else, they should be talked about more in art and society. On this note I agree with Mouawad that "you must never say 'It's not my fault'". The horror inflicted by human beings on human beings must be brought to light and acknowledged by all, point-blank period.

What I do not understand is what follows next, which constitutes both the cosmological order of the play's ethical laws and the homonymous Europa's pledge.

One of Europa's older brothers makes her swear a terrible oath that the dazed girl doesn't even fully comprehend: "Never forget the joy you felt today seeing your people massacre children, women and men who could not defend themselves. This joy is a scorpion that has been fixed in the place of your vagina! Push a knife into this sex and tear out the roots of this hatred. Never say it is not my fault! It is your fault because we are responsible for what we feel! And because you are responsible it is up to you to cut off the transmission of hatred! Swear to me!"

This brother then proceeds to turn against their father (who had participated in the aforementioned horrific scenes) and gets his teeth pulled out one after the other by him in retaliation. Nevertheless, toothless and bloodied as he is, he manages to gnaw at his father's throat and kill him.

Unable to forget her pledge, Europa turns into a life of promiscuity ("I didn't even know who the father of the first child was") with the sole purpose of giving birth to eighteen children in order to kill them all. At some point she becomes so accustomed to killing that she starts abandoning her children. Three of them -all daughters-, thus survive (one was even abandoned next to the sewers) and, summoned by Assia, now meet their mother for the first time, only to become aware of the family curse that her pledge has brought upon them: the half-Swedish daughter is plagued by inexplicable nightmares filled with menacing dogs and vulnerable children, that bring upon her panic attacks so potent that in one instance she vomited and urinated on herself, the half-Greek daughter has had three inexplicable miscarriages and is told by Europa that she was a premature baby "shat out" by her, and the half-Arab daughter, the one abandoned next to the sewers, has lovingly raised a son who one day inexplicably killed, raped and ate his girlfriend, even succumbing to the mysterious urge to cut her from throat to vagina and stick his head in her insides to eat her flesh.

Here's how the play becomes atemporal, unable to either adhere to the "rhythm" and "logic" of ancient Greek drama or to what would "make sense" according to our modern moral compass, in my opinion:

• The horrific scenes inside the classroom (everything that the young Europa witnessed and that took place before her pledge) have a particularly truthful, yet present-day ring to them. The descriptions that leave nothing untold serve a documentary-like function that brings to mind nothing of the myths or heroes of old but at least a dozen religious genocides that occurred in recent history (if not occurring as we speak).

This horror, so raw and so distinctly human, leaves no space for the metaphysical in terms of tone. You simply can not go from describing genocidal acts in detail to entertaining the notion that ancient Greek gods are somehow involved in all of this.

• The photography-like narration of these scenes is too modern to allow for the introduction of fantastical elements from an ancient mythological/religious past that the contemporary viewer "agrees" to visit for entertainment purposes only. That being said, I consider the classroom scenes one of the strongest elements of this play and wish that the playwright could forget about ancient drama altogether and straight up explore modern conflict using modern semiology.

• All subsequent scenes depicting violence have a particularly unrealistic, bordering on the cringe-worthy effect.

A father who rips out his son's teeth, a son who gnaws at his father's throat until he kills him, a mother who drowns her (15?!) children, a grandson who out of the blue becomes a killer, rapist and cannibal in one night because of a bloodline curse... Sure, it all sounds ancient-y, tragic-y, Greek-ish enough. But there is no balance in cause and effect, which is a key requirement in ancient drama.

It is very questionable, even by contemporary moral standards, whether a girl who alerted adults about the presence of (what she considers) the enemy at a time of war "deserves" the terrible oath Europa is made to take.

• Speaking of which, it is also particularly bizarre that despite everything going on, the brother finds it in his heart to make his underage sister take such a horrible oath. By ancient standards, when infant mortality was high and dying at war or becoming enslaved should you survive said war were likely to considerably lower your life expectancy or quality anyway, cursing your own bloodline would have required some extraordinary feat of awfulness. Then again, I suppose this is not so much about a curse as it is about owning up to your actions and making sure your kin does too (a concept unheard of in either ancient or modern Greece).

  
  

  

© Theofilos Tsimas.

Europa (on the right) and her half-Greek daughter, Megara (on the left).

• In any case, ancient Greek drama is all about the catharsis. The ending is supposed to offer a conclusion that liberates the audience from all the tension and anguish it went throughout the play. It is supposed to "fix" things in our soul by presenting a "solution" that satisfies us on a mental, moral and psychological level. The take-away message is subsequently meant to effortlessly appear before our eyes and be intuitively felt in our hearts.

  There was no catharsis in this play. Leaving aside the fact that the necessary for catharsis balance between cause and effect was missing, the whole play felt like a setup for the self-proclaimed culprit, her daughters and her grandson to suffer. At times it read as a revenge fantasy with an undertone of didacticism.

  
  
  
  

On a lesser note, it's been two days since I saw the play and I still can't tell who Europa was meant to be. The writer expressly mentions the ancient Greek myth of Europe in interviews, but the reference seems forced. According to the myth, Europe was a Phoenician princess abducted by Zeus who, in the form of a white bull, took her to Crete and (in human form!) had three sons with her, before marrying her off to a local king. She never got to return home and she didn't quite consent to anything. In modern terms that whole ordeal would make her a victim of abduction (at the very least) or human trafficking at worst.

Symbolically speaking, Europe is an eternally young, innocent victim. On the other hand, Europa is presented as a war criminal child and a serial murderer adult.

I fail to see the connection.

© Alejandro DeCinti, oil on canvas, 2018

OG Europe, not to be confused with the villainous Europa.

The play's character doesn't seem like a reference to the mythological Europe, but an allegory about European colonial (?), Axis (?), neocolonial (?), E.U.(?), U.N.(?), NATO(?), (???) wrongdoings. Instead of making this a story about a massacre in a fictional place, however, I wish that there were more breadcrumbs and clues alluding to real events. It feels as though the immensely powerful and raw classroom scenes are wasted in this melange of meant-to-be-ancient and possibly contemporary (?) political (?) symbolism that doesn't satisfy either receptor and ends up being too abstract to truly imprint a lesson. I also think that the "You must never say 'It's not my fault'" axiom would be better served by the plot if it was (more) obvious what real atrocity this is all about.

Final verdict: Mouawad is a talented writer, but, in this play, this becomes evident in fragments - scenes, monologues or quotes that read as if they were written at different times, with a different project in mind. He is also very clearly a seasoned director, masterfully showing flashbacks to the characters' experiences, while making it understood that these are not events narrated or known to the other characters present, for example. The international cast (Juliette Binoche, Daria Pisareva, Danae Eleftheriadou, Emmanuel Schwartz, Violette Chauveau and Leora Rivlin) did a phenomenal job. Despite keeping the audience's attention until the very last scene, however, the play ultimately fails to produce a convincing narrative, as ancient and contemporary elements cancel -rather than compliment- each other out, resulting in an ending that offers no aha! moments, no catharsis and no impactful take-aways.