Christos Vakalopoulos’s The line of the horizon, directed by the valedictorian of the National Theatre of Greece Drama School Directing Department, Giorgos Pavlou, brings down the curtain on this season’s productions at the Experimental Stage for Emerging Artists.

“A story of escape” was how the prematurely deceased author (but also critic, essayist, director and radio producer) described perhaps his most mature work, which was largely based on his own experiences. A 32-year-old woman, Rea Frantzi, is at a pivotal moment in her life: she has just got divorced – without knowing why – and takes refuge on Patmos, the deeply spiritual island where John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelations, and where she painfully takes stock of her life. This involves not only reckoning up her personal losses, but also bidding farewell to a generation that has given in, an Athens that has lost all sense of itself, a Greece consumed by materialism, and a society that has surrendered its identity to superficiality.

The line of the horizon was written in 1991 in language both aphoristic and disarming, full of vivid images and evocative silences, with substantial use of poetic irony and repetition, characterised by subversive humour and idiosyncrasy. It is a work that brims with prophetic insights, electrifies with its harsh truths, speaks to today in a way that few contemporary texts manage to, and does not hesitate to make all of us face the responsibility we bear for turning this country into a fantasy land where everyone wants to live.