Review: GONE WITH THE WIND at Piraeus Municipal Theatre

When the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus announced a stage adaptation of Gone with the Wind, directed by Ioli Andreadi and opening in April of 2025, anticipation was tempered with curiosity. Could Margaret Mitchell’s sprawling novel—synonymous in most minds with the sweeping grandeur of its 1939 film version—be condensed into an intimate evening of theater?  The answer, as Andreadi’s production masterfully demonstrated, was yes. And in doing so, it delivers something far richer, leaner, and more human than any screen recreation.  The production – which broke box office records in its initial run, returned to the Municipal Theater for a limited run in October.

By any measure, adapting Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind for the stage is a daring move. Director Ioli Andreadi’s new production tackles this monumental source head-on—not through spectacle, but through intimacy and restraint. The result is a haunting reinterpretation that feels fresh, human, and startlingly relevant.

First and foremost, this adaptation cleaves to Mitchell’s novel rather than the cinematic spectacle. That distinction matters. By grounding itself in the written narrative, the production restores Mitchell’s complex tone—a mix of romanticism and brutal realism—while avoiding the movie’s ornamental nostalgia. Andreadi, known for her ability to make classic material feel urgently modern, approaches Gone with the Wind not as a reverent homage but as a psychological excavation. Her storytelling highlights Scarlett O’Hara’s survival instinct and moral ambiguity rather than sentimental heroism.

The visual world of the production is built on striking contrasts. The stage unfolds in stark black and white, a design decision that immediately distances the audience from the technicolor opulence that defined the film. The absence of color becomes poetic; it suggests memory, loss, and the erosion of grandeur. Set designer Mikaela Liakata crafts an environment of shifting focus points that recall early war photography—frozen and ghostly. The effect is at once minimal and evocative, framing Scarlett and Rhett’s turbulent relationship as something happening inside a fading photograph.

Andreadi’s direction is remarkably assured. The production’s pacing is fluid, moving between war, love, and desperation with a rhythm that feels almost cinematic, yet never overwrought. Scenes flow effortlessly—actors shifting props, changing hats, altering accents—to suggest the passage of time and the whiplash of history. Nothing drags. Andreadi handles Mitchell’s massive narrative with the confidence of a conductor, shaping a coherent whole from fragments of memory and desire.

At the center of the production is Lena Papaligoura as Scarlett O’Hara, a performance that transforms one of literature’s most polarizing heroines into a figure of startling intimacy. Papaligoura makes Scarlett neither likable nor villainous but startlingly real. Her performance grounds the story in fierce, beating emotion. This Scarlett is less the spoiled debutante of old portrayals and more a portrait of endurance—selfish, practical, alive. Papaligoura’s voice, low and precise, carries the frustration of a woman determined to survive a world built to destroy her.  Her portrayal brims with contradictions: vanity and resourcefulness, fragility and fire.

Opposite her Orestis Tziovas’s Rhett Butler is rendered with sardonic restraint, less a dashing rogue than a disillusioned observer.  Tziovas’s Rhett is cool and melancholic, a man watching his ideals disintegrate.   Their chemistry crackles not through grand declarations but through moments of silence, hesitation, and lingering gaze—the kind of connection that thrives in a small venue.

That closeness defines the entire experience. The Municipal Theatre’s moderate scale turns Mitchell’s epic into a chamber drama, where the audience feels every breath, every flicker of conscience. Andreadi exploits this proximity with precision. One moment, Scarlett stands mere feet away, whispering her defiance; the next, the ensemble becomes a chorus of witnesses, echoing lines from the novel like ghosts of memory. It’s intimate theater at its most potent—a dialogue between audience and story rather than a spectacle viewed from afar.  Special kudos to Idra Kayne as Mammy, whose singing provided a rich and evocative element to the overall production.

The production’s use of sound and lighting further deepens its emotional force. Instead of grand orchestral interludes, faint ambient hums and percussive rhythms underscore scenes of war and devastation, while well-known old Americana songs punctuate the scene changes.   Lighting designer Stella Kaltsou stunningly employs stark beams and silhouettes to suggest transitions from Tara’s sunlit fields to the smoldering ruins of Atlanta. The interplay of light and dark amplifies Andreadi’s central insight: that Gone with the Wind is not about nostalgia for a vanished South but about endurance amid ruin.

By the time the lights fade on Scarlett’s solitary figure—a woman stripped of illusion but unbroken—the sense of intimacy lingers. Andreadi’s Gone with the Wind does not seek to outdo the cinematic legend; it seeks to reclaim the story’s essence, the ache of human survival beneath history’s collapse.  The result is a profoundly theatrical reimagining: austere, clever, and achingly personal.

"Gone with the Wind" is the third work in a trilogy of our original theatrical adaptations of classic literary works - War and Peace 2019, Pride and Prejudice 2020, Gone with the Wind 2025. All three have been performed in Greece with great success.  Here’s hoping the team of Andreadi and Asproulis continue to build on this new tradition, and bring it to audiences beyond their homeland.

Peter Danish