Solomos' unfinished 1826 text gets three nights at a Nicosia bookshop

The Nicosia International Festival is staging The Woman of Zakynthos at Erma Bookshop in Nicosia on 17 and 18 September, three performances of a text Dionysios Solomos left unfinished in 1826.

Antigoni Gyra directs and choreographs the production, shaping both the movement and the overall staging of a work that Solomos himself never resolved into a finished form. Performances run at 8pm on 17 September, then twice on 18 September, at 8pm and 11pm, giving the run a total of three sittings rather than a longer open engagement. Tickets are priced at 20 euros for the Greek-language performances, the only language in which the production is being presented.

Solomos wrote The Woman of Zakynthos as a prose fragment in 1826, and he never completed it, leaving behind a text that has since been read, argued over and reinterpreted for close to two centuries without a settled final version. The Nicosia staging does not attempt to resolve that incompleteness by presenting the original alone. Instead, it blends Solomos' writing with material by Konstantinos Poulis, set to music composed by the rapper Anser, layering a contemporary text and a rap score onto the nineteenth-century fragment rather than treating it as a museum piece to be read straight.

The production carries a history beyond this Cyprus booking. Before arriving at Erma Bookshop, it was staged as a reading in Athens across two separate runs, meaning the Nicosia dates extend a project that has already been tested in front of audiences rather than premiering untried. That prior life as a staged reading, now moved into a bookshop setting with added choreography, suggests a work still being reshaped rather than one settling into a fixed touring form.

The choice of a bookshop over a conventional theatre puts the audience physically close to a text that remains unfinished by its own author's hand, a proximity that suits material still being argued over rather than delivered as settled classic. Pairing that fragment with Poulis' contemporary writing and Anser's music marks this out as a departure from a straight reading of Solomos, closer to an adaptation built specifically for a small room and a handful of performances. With only three sittings scheduled and the Athens readings behind it, the Nicosia run reads less as a static revival and more as another stage in an ongoing reworking of a text that has never had a final one.