“The Parenticide Club” – Ambrose Bierce

Directed by: Georgia Andreou

with Okwaho live on stage

Unsuitable for under 17s.

“There are four different kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.”

Ambrose Bierce

“The Parenticide Club”, the controversial and caustic book by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913) in a first ever theatrical adaptation, to be staged at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, in cooperation with the House of Cyprus, for only three performances, directed by Georgia Andreou. Okwaho, live on stage, accompany the wonderfully bizarre tale with doom sludge metal, in an original score.

“Bitter Bierce” makes his entrance…

Bitter Bierce.  That’s what they used to call the young Ambrose Bierce, a pioneer of horror fiction and American weird, who is considered, in the history of literature, to be one of the fathers of the psychological thriller.  His stories are violently satirical, his prose dry and heavily laced with black humour.  His motto, “ Nothing matters” pretty much says it all.

The performance looks into the anatomy of violence.  It is a cult, grotesque, vitriolic, paranoid, and yet solidly dark, however odd, allegory about the things which can lead someone to commit acts of evil (and worse).  The performance is made up of four parts in which the protagonists tell the story, with crude honesty and ice cold irony, of how they killed their parents and other relations…

Georgia Andrea plays on cynicism as she delves deep into the subconscious, along with the anti-heroes, not to discover why Bierce would write a book like “The Parenticide Club”, but why people continue to feel a connection to it.  “The Parenticide Club” should be considered a wake up call, for the play which  unfolds on stage before our very eyes is nothing more than the result of that which has already been cultured –  that which our own society has allowed to be created.

The dark, enraged melodies of Okwaho reflect the psyche of the protagonists, adding depth to the action, and luring the audience into an asphyxiating deadlock.

The performance is the first part of the Trilogy about Violence and Insanity.