Conceived and directed by Μario Βanushi
Taverna Miresia is the name of the family restaurant of Greek-Albanian director Mario Banushi. A part of his Romance Familiare, which also includes Ragada and Goodbye, Lindita, Taverna Miresia is also the space where a memory about his father happened.
The set that welcomes us is strikingly distinctive: a bathroom, with a washing machine, a bath surrounded by a curtain, a sink, a freestanding radiator in the centre, exposed light bulbs protruding from the wall, a small white bin, a mirror hanging on the wall, a laundry basket overflowing with clothes, and a drying rack standing against the wall. And, of course, there is the huge neon sign lying on the floor. After the familiar reminder of EIF’s programme, Mario himself emerges from the bath, bathing naked. Once he puts on his clothes and prepares for his father’s funeral, four women appear, sitting on chairs that have suddenly emerged from almost total darkness. They seem to be his mother and sisters: Bella and Anastasia, as well as another woman who was close to his father while he was still alive.
Mario slowly lowers himself to the edge of the stage, watching like an audience member, while the four women express their complex feelings towards his death. They sing, try to taste the food in the restaurant he left behind, and move through involuntary convulsions or a dance that resembles a ritual for summoning the dead. At some point, the space occupied by the women is transformed again: the chairs disappear, and a grave emerges where they had been sitting, its surface already covered with grass. Mario repeatedly intervenes in the scene, and towards the end, he pulls his father’s clothes out of the grave. The show ends with the walls of the bathroom breaking apart, as light comes through the arched window.
Banushi’s show is silent, with no dialogue except for a long, distant song from his mother. The absence of his father, the figure who looms over the entire work, casts a long shadow over them. Without language to articulate their feelings, the women communicate through their bodies, voices, rhythms and repeated actions. In the silence, these gestures take on an almost ghostly quality.
Many of these scenes feel like a collective memory shared by Mario and his sisters. At other moments, they could be a dream, one that Mario shares with his sisters, and one that he needs to witness in order to understand himself. The feeling is difficult to grasp, precisely because the work refuses to explain it. Instead, memory seems to exist in the body, in repetition, and in the objects left behind. It feels deeply engraved into their existence, and into their grief.
Reviewed on 29 August 2026 | Image: Contributed
