Mengele is the iconic work of the dramaturgy of Thanasis Triaridis – and one of the most unique contemporary Greek theatrical texts of recent decades.

Written in 2012 during a decade, it has experienced more than 15 different performances in Athens as well as in various cities in Greece and in Cyprus. It is a work that attempts to confront the most incomprehensible brutality in Western history: the Experimentation Laboratory of Joseph Mengele at Auschwitz-Birkenau. An extreme moral parable (or even a meta-political dystopia), a science fiction thriller, and a love tragedy intertwine beyond the boundaries of morality, at the invisible juncture where the most passionate love meets absolute evil.

Two strangers from today's world: a man (a civil servant of some public service) and a woman (a PhD candidate in History) in the compartment of an electric train, on a night journey; a typical introductory conversation. Everything starts with a sudden power outage, at which point the two protagonists, to overcome their awkwardness, will play a childhood game of roles (each of the two takes on a very specific historical or fictional personality): the man will impersonate "Joseph Mengele," the infamous "Angel of Death" of Auschwitz, and the woman will play "Esther," the granddaughter of a Jewish survivor, victim of the terrible experiments of the mysterious doctor.

However, the game will quickly take a turn for the two trapped in the train compartment: could they really be who they pretend to be? And where can they go "playing" such a game with morality, with the human condition, with all of previous History?

The author himself notes in his Introduction: “In every new performance of this specific work, I face the same question. 'But why do you write about Mengele?...' And I always respond the same way: 'Because he existed – thus he can re-exist at any moment. I write about Mengele because I want to prove that the catastrophe of the Holocaust is continuously present. Evil does not come from the sky, nor from the depths of a Hell that does not exist. Evil is within us – and it requires a moral struggle and cultural vigilance so that we are not the ones who will put people on the trains for the next Auschwitz.'”