Three Graces dramatizes the Cretan struggle for independence in poetic and imaginative fashion, using music, dance and (live) puppetry to enliven the story and give it a feminist slant.
Mariana Newhard plays Irini, an earth-mother figure who serves as a kind of narrator and guardian angel. The time is the 1800's: Greece has been under Turkish occupation for four centuries, but now the natives led by Michales (the dynamic Newton Pittman) not only want their freedom but are ready to fight and die for it.
Michales is pitted against the Pasha (the equally strong Tony Naumovski), a young Turkish warlord who also happens to be his boyhood friend. Once they admired and loved each other, now history and politics have turned them into reluctant enemies. Also caught up in the fog of war are various other Greek and Turkish characters, including Roxelana (Nadia Sepsenwol) and Karaghiozis (the impish Lucie Pohl), a Fool-like figure out of Ottoman shadow-play puppetry.
Backed by a four-piece music ensemble, the tragic tale of brother battling brother is brought to life in a strikingly vivid and compelling way.
