Makis Patelis

Out of Kifissia

Patelis belongs to Kifissia, the leafy suburb at the northern end of the Athens conurbation, and he has never been coy about the attachment. In a 2020 interview he described the place in the terms people reserve for an old romance — somewhere you keep going back to. It is also where the current production played during its summer tour, which says something about how local a working Greek actor's career can remain even after decades of national television exposure.

His own account of his casting is unsentimental: he is picked for comedy. Much of his stage work has sat in the mid-century Greek comic repertoire, the Sakellarios and Tsiforos end of the canon, writing built on mistaken identity, household hierarchy and lines that land on rhythm rather than on wit. He has worked repeatedly with the director Petros Zoulias. In 2020 he was appearing in the musical Zititai Pseftis and preparing the second season of the play Marika, which opened on 16 October that year, while also starting work on a feature film.

Twenty-five years of Greek television

The screen record runs from 2000 onwards and covers most of the big Greek free-to-air channels. Early on he was billed under his full first name — Iakovos Patelis — in the series Strivein dia tou Arravonos in 2000 and again in Tychi Vouno in 2006, before Makis became the standing credit. Ta Filarakia followed in 2002. He played a police chief in Tilebora across its 2004-2005 run, and the same period produced the comedy Erotas me Epidotisi O.G.A. in 2005, still one of the titles most often attached to his name.

The later credits are the ones Greek audiences recognise on sight. He turned up as Mantouvalas in an episode of To Soi Sou in 2017. He played Kitsoulas in the rural comedy Haireta mou ton Platano across its 2020 to 2023 run, appeared in I Diki mas Oikogeneia in 2022, and was in Peta ti Friteza. His most recent television work listed is IQ 160 for Star in 2025. On film, Karditsa for Ever, directed by Stratos Markidis, went into production in the summer of 2020 and was released in 2021.

What the list describes is a career built on being useful rather than on being the name above the title — the character man who keeps an ensemble comedy moving. The current theatre job inverts that arrangement, and it is the reason this is the interesting moment to look at him.

Giannoukakis, 1953

O Didymos Belas — roughly, Twin Trouble — was written by Dimitris Giannoukakis in 1953 and belongs to the Greek boulevard tradition that the post-war Athenian stage ran on. The mechanism is the oldest one there is: a small lie, inflated by misunderstanding until the household collapses, then order restored in the last ten minutes.

Patelis plays Paraskevas, a husband who covers his infidelities by inventing a twin brother called Leandros and blaming everything on him. His wife, when she works it out — photographs do the damage — retaliates by flirting with another man, which makes Paraskevas jealous and the lie harder to maintain. The structure then does what the structure always does: the real Leandros exists, turns up, and looks nothing like him.

The production's choice worth noting is textual. Giannoukakis's play was filmed in 1962, and in Greece the film is the better-known artefact; this staging goes back to the 1953 script rather than reworking the screen version. The director, Giorgos Frantzeskakis, relocates the action to the 1960s, with sets by Lamprini Kardara and costumes by Kyriaki Gaspari built to the period, and he also wrote the music. It is produced by the company Ef(f)oria Gelotos.

Summer 2026 on open-air stages

The production opened on Saturday 4 July 2026 and spent the summer on the open-air circuit — municipal amphitheatres and festival stages across Attica first, then further out into the Greek regions, and on to Cyprus. That route is how Greek commercial theatre actually makes its money: a show is assembled for July and August, tours nightly on a different stage each time, and only then considers a winter address in Athens.

By mid-August it was being written up as one of the summer's reliable comedy draws. The touring format puts real pressure on a farce — a period interior has to be struck and rebuilt daily, acoustics change every night, and the laughs have to carry across open seating rather than a 200-seat room. Reviewers who caught it outdoors made a point of the set still looking like a 1960s Athenian flat despite the conditions.

Mondays at the Alkmini

The winter booking is a Monday-only residency at the Theatro Alkmini in Athens, beginning Monday 19 October 2026 and continuing weekly at 21:00. One night a week is the standard arrangement for a touring comedy taking a city slot rather than a full season, and it means the show carries no support act and no second performance in a day — a single evening, with everything resting on the one cast.

The company gives the running time as one hour forty-five minutes. Tickets are €17 standard, €14 for over-65s, students, the unemployed and disabled patrons, and €12 for groups; presales run through Ticketmaster and the venue is listed as wheelchair accessible.

Beside Patelis the cast is Eleni Filini as the wife, Zano Danias as the servant, Petros Petrou as the photographer, Kostas Zekos, Kali Davri as the friend and Zacharenia Spiliou, with Periklis Tsamantanis taking the double role the plot depends on.

What the reviewers found

Writing in Cosmopoliti on 12 August 2026, Vasilis Natsios clocked the performance at around two hours — longer than the official running time, which is what happens to a farce playing to a laughing outdoor house — and described continuous laughter and warm applause. His central observation about Patelis is a technical one: the play hangs a catchphrase on Paraskevas, roughly "here's another one", and Patelis varies the delivery every time it comes round rather than letting it calcify into a tic. Natsios also credited Frantzeskakis with keeping the pace fast and the ensemble tight.

The review on Kallitexnes made a similar argument from a different angle, praising Patelis for giving a fundamentally contradictory character some sincerity and for not reaching for the easy laugh, and the rest of the company for holding the comic timing in balance. Neither notice claims the play is anything other than what it is. The case being made for the production is craft on familiar material: an old script played straight, at speed, by people who know how the machinery works.