The novel The Unsuccessful by the leading Austrian writer Thomas Bernhardt, which marked German-language literature in the second half of the 20th century, is being presented in a pan-Hellenic premiere at the Alternative Stage of the ELLS, adapted and directed by the always artistically restless director, actor and cinematographer Hectors Lygizos.

A theatrical adaptation that transforms the monologue narrative of the original into a musical theater work for four voices and a piano.

Written in 1983 in the author's well-known delusional style, the novel The Unsuccessful tells the story of the fictional friendship between the legendary Canadian pianist Glenn Gould and two Austrian former classmates of Vladimir Horowitz, who have lived their lives as failed pianists. It is a short novel that doubles as a vitriolic treatise on envy, ambition, fame, genius, perfectionism, obsession and frustration. Recounting despair with unceasing caustic humor but also a deep love for his crippled heroes, the author seems to organize the entire story around the repetitive, circular structure of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations, rendering the self-centeredness, obsessions, and , the compulsions and fixation of persons in their insurmountable impasses. At the same time, however, he does not forget to mercilessly cauterize the moral decay of post-war Austria, which, decades after the fall of Nazism and still imbued with cynicism and cruelty, still operates by the law of the absolute winner and the desperate losers.

The play's setting, as in the novel's narrative present, is the foyer of an abandoned Central European hotel where, after Gould's death and the suicide of their mutual friend, the unnamed narrator unfolds his recurring thoughts while the dead are constantly present around of him like ghosts, reproducing conversations, aphorisms and events of their shared past. At the same time, the performance puts Bach's music in constant conversation with his spoken word and musicality, capitalizing on Gould's own infamous habit of mumbling notes while playing the piano and thus composing a peculiar "spoken musical" that moves in intermediate space between prose and musical theater.

Coefficients:
Translation: Vassilis Tomanas
Adaptation, direction: Hectoras Lygizos
Music consultant: Charalambos Gogios
Stage: Myrto Lambrou
Costumes: Alkisti Mamali
Choreographies, collaboration in movement: Dimitris Mytilineos
Lighting design: Dimitris Kasimatis
Make-up and hairstyle design: Ioanna Lygizou
Assistant director: Eva Vlassopoulou

Performed by: Hectoras Lygizos, Amalia Moutousi, Aris Balis, Yiannis Niarros