Where do we come from? Where do we go when we die? What’s good or bad? Why do we do what we do? Do we blame ourselves for who we are, or is there someone else, an all-knowing entity that has created us, and therefore we should blame him/her?
Apollo/Dionysus has all these themes at its core and, never trying to answer any of these questions, explores them by placing a child in an unknown place (a visual projection of his own psyche, perhaps?), confronting both Apollo, Greek god of order and truth and Dionysus, Greek god of wine and fertility, for answers. Together they form the good versus evil battle, the Ying and Yang, that exist in all of us.
While the play might get a bit too philosophical in places, and be hard to follow, both Andrew Oliveira (Apollo) and Jonny Liron (Dionysus) do an excellent job, both physically and vocally. Being on stage at all moments, they are both in character at all time, never letting the issue of their nakedness (there are both fully naked during the performance) interrupt their act (not even when some audience laughs, uncomfortably, at Dionysus passionate moments). It is a credit to their acting skills that one soon forgets this fact, and concentrates in what they are saying, as it is not their nakedness or their physical interaction the source of all the eroticism and sensuality the play exudes, but the words they speak. They ring true and poetic, revealing and shocking at the same time. Without answering the child’s questions completely, they enlighten him (and the audience) about what it means to be a human being.
Without being perfect, Apollo/Dionysus deserves a viewing, even if this can only be at midnight, a chosen time slot, I suspect, due to their risky subject matter and mise-en-scene.
4/5
Adrian G. Velazquez
