Mojmír II. Alebo Súmrak Ríše – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 19/06/15]

At bloody last! It’s so neat it might have almost been planned. Having been *interested* by both the means and subjects of the first four Slovakian plays, I couldn’t honestly say I’d discovered anything that I (and, yes, of course, entirely subjective) could really say I loved (ok, maybe I married a werewolf!, but more in a “blimey!” sort of a way than “here is my new Alles weitere...”).

Mojmír II. Alebo Súmrak Ríše (Mojmír II, or: The Twilight Of An Empire) is kind of amazing really. What it is, what it seems to be, is a play about Slovakian history – circa 893AD – made from a chewed-up, cannibalised King Lear threaded through some wild and rangy poetry of the author’s own. (I say “the author”. There is no author or playwright credited. There’s a director (Rastislav Ballek) and a dramaturg (Peter Kováč) and that’s your lot. Did they really make a text this lyrical and complex without a single living writer in the room? Consider me doubly impressed, retrospectively)

There are only four performers on stage for most of the show. An old man, a blind man, a mad-woman/fool/goddess and a bloke in a suit (Robert Roth, Emil Horváth, Daniel Fischer, Dominika Kavaschová – maybe in that order, but the English version  of the website doesn’t give character names, and I’d be pushed to say which character had which name anyway...). Towards the close, there’s also a life-sized skeleton marionette dressed as a priest (I think operated by at least Ivan Martinka, but also a.n. uncredited-other).

And it’s hard to think of anything that it’s like. The nearest I got was imagining what a young, violent Peter Brook might do with a Howard Barker assault on Sophocles. There is something here that feels at once elemental, atavistic, primal almost. Like the noise of language crafted into something that communicates well beyond the reach of actual language.

The performances are also all suddenly, totally, electrically, alive. There were long stretches where I clean forgot to look at the surtitles because I just want to miss what the actors were doing. Also interestingly, this being the nth piece by the Slovakian National Theatre repertory company, I’d seen all of them before in something else. I’d sort of taken on trust the idea that they were good actors, but, just delivering lines with conviction at different volumes is a completely different game to what was going on here. Instead of some fairly inevitable, standard, near-realist moves, here we have something like complete bodily immersion in a part. The blind king is stripped to the waist, sinews taut, screaming or shouting about the land and the soil as he makes his way slowly, tortuously round the outside of the stage – the studio is here playing in-the-round to a one-row-deep audience, pinned against the wall perched on wooden chairs. [actor] hardly ever opens his eyes – caked in died blood – as he feels his way with a white stick. Meanwhile, [female character name] – Dominika Kavaschová transformed from her role as the selfish daughter-in-law in Midnight Mass – writhes, stretches and prowls her way round the other characters like a wild animal possessed by evil spirits. As Lear’s fools go – and this is her apparent sort-of role (or at least its where some of her cannibalised lines spring from) – she is the opposite of subordinate, having eschewed weird puns for a full on exploration of her sexuality. (And, *I think* this piece pretty much bucks the hitherto observable Slovakian trend for “demure” female “role-models”. I’m not entirely convinced Kavaschová needed to do the last scene in her bra, but then, since most of the blokes are covered in mud, blood, and either nearly naked or dead by this point, it really doesn’t *feel* male-gaze-y, but whatdoIknow?).

Juraj Poliak’s design almost adds to this sense of near-primal fury. On the back wall of the long space there’s a painting that looks halfway between cave painting and dirty protest. There’s also a massive metal frame horses head hanging ominously above the stage, and elsewhere a deconstructed full-size rest-of-horse is wheeled about or a metal frame is saddled... At one end of the stage a metal garden chair is briefly a throne, while at the other a miniature church stands in for, oh, Christ-knows-what.

To be honest, I’m not even remotely sure I got close to the sense of it, but I’m not sure I could have done without a simultaneous translation earpiece (PLUS footnotes in the other ear).

There is one scene, late in the play, where we appear to have reached the present day – or at least the Slovakian/Moravian King of the moment is dressed in the pervasive modern garb of the grudging we-have-to-wear-a-suit-in-the-office suit, short-sleeved shirt and tie. And he rails and rails against Slovakia, against it’s place in Europe. Against its sense of inferiority. Against leaving the country and against not leaving the country. He’s feeding coins into a tiny Red London Phone Box piggy-bank that seems to be standing in for an actual call box. It felt (perhaps over-readingly) to me, like the most honest self-assessment by a country of itself that I’d seen all week. Even the Germans, for all their unending horror at the crimes of their grandparents, or great grandparents, have Kant, Hegel, and Marx, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, of whom they can be inordinately proud. Here was a real sense of rage at a country that seemed destined to be an eternal underdog, to do or say the wrong things.

It’s always struck me that the true mark of integration into a place isn’t when you learn to love it, but when you can’t stop bloody moaning about it. That’s what belonging really means. Patriotism should never be about pride in your country, but disgust at it. The patriot who loves their country unconditionally is a fool, and might as well have been born anywhere. This was the play that actually started me thinking about “why nationalism anyway?”, “what is it even *for*?” “what does it achieve?”. And not before time, perhaps.

It strikes me writing this, that perhaps this should be the question asked by the next Eurokontext festival. This year’s edition did an admirable job of reframing, re-stating, and re-asking questions about nation and history. It would be exciting if the next festival were to ask “why nations at all?”

Cigáni – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 17/06/15]

Cigáni – the translation we’re offered is “Gypsies” – is described thus in the festival programme:

“Thriving gypsy music, colourful costumes and wild dances between shots of plum brandy. The idyllic start to the play resembles famous Broadway musical hits. The story of a classic love triangle in the 1930s – when the Hungarians and Gypsies were able to live amicably side by side – changes to comtemporary documentary with Hungarians throwing petrol bombs at the Gypsies. In 2008 and 2009 there were a series of attacks on Roma settlements in the Hungarian countryside. Musical idyll can no longer be referred to in this influential, opinion-forming Hungarian theatre play that – as an aesthetically and stylistically pure staging – tells of the current Hungary, the rise of nationalism and ethnic hatred, and of a detective plot in a small town where it not easy being either white or Gypsy. A play about seeking out the origin of fear, a play about the dark depths of Hungarians, Gypsies and us Europeans.”

Quite a problematic document, no? The reality is worse.

I don’t know how much you know about Hungarian politics, but, well, they’re pretty fucked. I should say at the outset: I only know left-wing Hungarians and they’re all horrified and depressed by what’s happening to their country. So, this is by no means about *all Hungarians*. However, at present, and by democratic election, the country is ruled by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party – somewhere to the right of UKIP – often supported by the Jobbik party, who are somewhere to the right of the BUF (British Union of Fascists there. Singing their anthem, which is a direct translation of the anthem of the Nazi party, in case you were in any doubt about just how closely allied the two were). There are a litany of examples of how these parties are hideous (the one where an elected member of a modern European democracy in 2012 wonders if they shouldn’t start keeping a “register of Jews” is pretty special, for example), and if you’re not already actively concerned and outraged about this, and about David Cameron’s alliance with them in a right-wing coalition in the European Parliament, then do do a bit of Googling. However, this is a theatre review, so let’s look at the play – but not before noting how Fidesz has a nasty habit of firing artistic directors and appointing its own members to run theatres (imagine Katie Hopkins being put in charge of the National and you’ve got some idea where they’re at).

There’s plenty to raise concern in the blurb: starting with the idea of “an aesthetically and stylistically pure staging” (a stupidly naïve claim with fascist overtones) and going through to the nonsense that is “ the play resembles famous Broadway musical hits” (it doesn’t) “a classic love triangle” (if Run For Your Wife is a classic love triangle, sure) “the 1930s when the Hungarians and Gypsies were able to live amicably side by side” (“were able” is bad enough, but, 1930s? Huh? (“At a conference in Hungary in 1909 concerning the ‘Gypsy problem’, there were equally astonishing statements, that today in the light of history sound familiar. Once speaker said, ‘Every Gypsy should be branded so as to assist in identification’.” [my emphasis]), “contemporary documentary with Hungarians throwing petrol bombs at the Gypsies” (“contemporary documentary” in the same way that England People Very Nice was a documentary maybe?). Not to mention “a play about seeking out the origin of fear” – not much to seek out. It’s: “irrational prejudice. Racism”. Not much investigation needed there, unless you want to justify the racism. “Why are people being nasty to the gypsies?” the play asks. “Let’s look at the gypsies and find out” it seems to suggest. Just: no.

So, yeah. For the majority of the first half we’re shown a portrait of “gypsy life” in the 1930s (there is literally no way of knowing when it’s set, except presumably by the fact that the “gypsy” characters aren’t being enthusiastically loaded onto trains to the death camps, or having petrol bombs thrown at them). All the “gypsies” are played by (white, as if it needs saying) Hungarian actors. The portrayal of the “gypsies” is pretty much the most overtly racist thing I have ever seen. The sum total of the attributes we see them display collectively are: drunkenness, violence, lechery, dishonesty, and playing music. (Thinking about it, it’s basically Posh, but with gypsies – but then, imagine what Posh would be like if it was about a racial minority, played at a time when that minority were already being persecuted, and played solely to people outside that group...). The best I can say, then, of the first half of the play is that it *might* be intended affectionately and just winds up being racist by mistake(!). The second part – the “investigation” – basically consists of some racist policemen poking around in some burnt out housing.

It’s strange to consider that *I think* the intent here is broadly liberal, and concerned about violence against minority ethnic populations. It appears, however, that an uninterrogated, racist stereotype has still permeated the thinking here – not to mention an atrocious lack of *any* discernible theatrical talent or know-how whatsoever – with the net effect that this looks like nothing so much as a bigoted six-form revue. In short, you can’t make an anti-racist play by putting a lot of characters on stage and asking “who’d want to firebomb these fun-loving, simple, childlike folks?” Ironically, though, by pandering to these idiotic stereotypes, the piece ultimately shows us exactly why Hungary’s got a race problem: because it’s a way of thinking so ingrained that even liberal theatremakers trying to protest it can’t seem to think their way outside the rhetoric.

I should reiterate again, lest I be accused of bigotry myself, that in my personal experience, not a single Hungarian I’ve met has been racist. And every single one detests the government with a passion. “Echo chamber” maybe, but at least it exists. By the same token, Hungarians I know have been having a fucking hard time since Fidesz came to power. Everyone not hard-right in the arts in Hungary has. Perhaps ultimately that’s the source of this play’s politics – the fact that if you make a play that calls the government out, you’re effectively asking to be sacked, blacklisted, and unemployable. So maybe not everyone can afford to be brave.

Bleak, no?

Polnočná omša – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 17/06/15]

After the first three Slovakian plays – Ridge, Wife and Prophet – particularly given the work programmed from elsewhere – Young Stalin, The Stone – it was starting to feel like there was a bit of an elephant in the room – a big WWII elephant wearing the uniform of the Hlinka. Polnočná omša (Midnight Mass) tackles the elephant head-on.

Going in blind – not knowing when it was written or that the elephant was the subject – it starts off looking like your bog-standard, post-Ibsen family drama. In Tom Ciller’s design, the SND’s wonderfully adaptable studio space is bisected by a traverse stage with two gauze walls, meaning that we can only see through our own 4th wall to the plain room – a simple wooden table surrounded by chairs and two doorframes left and right. A mother and father chunter about while their son and his wife (although she calls his mother “mama” and might as well be his sister until about three quarters of the way through...) bicker. It’s Christmas eve and there are clearly a few unspoken tensions bubbling around under the surface.

It’s the moment when one of the other sons arrives home that a source for all the tension becomes clear. He throws off his coat and we see that he’s wearing the Hlinka uniform. It is, for the record, a properly brilliant, chilling reveal. As a set-up, it feels pretty promising, but somehow Peter Karvaš’s script blows it.

I happened to see the play the day that the reviews for We Want You To Watch came out and part of me wanted to sit everyone who said something like WWYTW “triggers a debate that it doesn’t fully articulate” down in front of this to see where that line of reasoning could get them. *Except*, there’s nothing actually wrong with the ‘argument play’ done well (Copenhagen’s pretty good, right? That sort of thing), WWYTW was just a different thing.

However, without wanting to be *that guy*, Midnight Mass, failed for me because it falls right down between the two stools it might sit on. It’s a family drama where we just don’t care about the family, OR, an argument play hamstrung because it feels that Karva has taken pretty much every possible argument on the spectrum that Slovakia had in WWII and has made up a person in the family to represent it. Shoutily. But somehow bloodlessly and undramatically. There’s the fascist son who’s been out in the fields murdering Jews. There’s the mother who is also a fascist supporter, but who doesn’t actively take part in their activities, and finds murdering Jewish children *maybe a bit much*. There’s the ageing father who plays up his deafness to avoid even having to confront what’s going on at all. There’s the young wife who’s pleased to have been given a formerly-Jewish-run sweet shop to run. Her husband, the stay-at-home communist who *really disagrees* with the fascists – big whoop. And then, finally, there’s the ultimate source of conflict: the family’s third son, a partisan hiding out in the forests – except he’s not hiding out in the forests because the Slovakian winter has brought him down with a likely-fatal illness. He’s in the family woodshed and urgently needs medical attention. Then, blimey! [Hlinka son]’s German superior pops by to be the unexpectedly urbane and pleasant Nazi who, nonetheless, follows orders.

Even relating the plot it sounds more exciting than potboiler-y, but here the practically melodramatic level of ACTING and SHOUTING!! makes it feel much more so. Added to this is the fact that the only real dilemma being discussed here is whether blood is thicker than ideology. And, inevitably, it isn’t really. There’s a strange scene toward the end where the whole piece comes over all A (Nazi) Inspector Calls, where [German officer] has collected the family Marple-like in their dining room and delivers a synopsis of their moral misdeeds. As a device – and possibly as a scene in a better play, maybe even in a better production of this play – it might be rather good. Here, it felt almost uncomfortably comic. [German officer]’s judgement is compounded by the finest moment of the play – its climax: Partisans have liberated the town with recorded gunfire. They burst into dining room to see the wretched family sitting around and the woman leading the freedom fighterrs says one word: “Fascists” and points her gun. After two hours something, it would have been quite cathartic to see her actually machine gun them all too. Loudly. (Only the characters, not the actual actors, it wasn’t *that* bad). Sadly it’s just lights down and applause.

But, yes; this feels like an urgent dramatic play undone with too much melodrama, too much arguing, not enough at stake to care about, and incredibly weak characterisation (onm the part of the writing). Of course, I say this, flinging reasons for things not working around like I have the faintest idea what it would look like another way. Perhaps the biggest frustration with this production wasn’t that it was bad, but that it was so close to brilliant – just viewed through a frustratingly frosted lens.

Prorok Štúr a jeho tiene alebo Zjavenie, obetovanie a nanebovstúpenie proroka Ľudovíta a jeho učeníkov – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 16/06/15]

Before Young Stalin, there was another historical drama to watch, Prorok Štúr a jeho tiene alebo Zjavenie, obetovanie a nanebovstúpenie proroka Ľudovíta a jeho učeníkov (The Prophet Štúr and His Shadow, or: The Apparition, Sacrifice and Ascension of The Prophet Ľudovíta and His Disciples). This is (as far as I can make out) a new piece of contemporary Slovakian drama. It is about the revolutionary years 1848 and 1849 in Slovakia. And, Very Annoyingly, it is almost entirely dramatically inert.

I’ve been thinking about this, and about my response to the other three Slovakian plays I’ve seen so far this week, and I am feeling fairly wretched for not having been able to praise a single one. It is absolutely crucial – especially at a festival called EuroKontext – to foreground my subjectivity here. And to report also that the (almost entirely) Slovak audiences I’ve been seeing the shows with have liked the work, responded to it, been moved by it, and often given it standing ovations (although that does seem more like a national tradition than a spontaneous impulse). All that is *very important*. Any criticisms I might have/criticism I write comes from what is a place of *fully acknowledged* *complete ignorance*, or at least from a mind so soaked in Anglo- and German traditions that I can’t quite get my head around this would-be “ideologically free” “realist” Slovakian tradition. (Not least because I cannot believe that there is a way for something not to be ideological, which, *obviously* I have to see as ideological too – I can’t have it both ways). The Anglo-German thing is interesting to me, though. Because I do feel at least slightly theatrically bi-lingual (although In No Way *actually* bi-lingual). I now feel both the German theatre response *and* the (traditional, old-fashioned, naturalistic) Anglo- one in my blood while I’m watching (as well as the possibly stronger, deeper Anglo- impulse to like *anything funny*). And I like to *hope*, having been watching theatre a fair old while, that this means I have twice the number of ways to approach a work of theatre. If “watch on its own terms” is meant to be our (flawed) dictum as critics, then the more terms with which we’re familiar, the better chance we have of understanding a piece of work, right? Of course, watching art is political and we might *choose* to wilfully appropriate a piece of work, and maybe even deliberately watch it in a way a piece was not intended to be watched in order to further our own political arguments. But, equally, we may just approach a piece of work *wrong*. And say it’s a bad attempt at (a), when in fact it’s a dazzling version of (b). But if we don’t know that (b) exists, it’s a rubbish (a), until we’ve collected further data.

All of which is a preamble to saying, Prorok Štúr a jeho tiene alebo Zjavenie, obetovanie a nanebovstúpenie proroka Ľudovíta a jeho učeníkov *seems* to be quite a bad (a). In this case, (a) is a historical drama, a history play: history dramatised. It is not a good (a) because it dramatises the history rather badly. It takes the sweep of the events of 1848 (and ‘49), and places blow-by-blow accounts of them into the mouths of ciphers with the names of principle players in the Slovakian freedom movement. Watching, I did wonder if my lack of any sense of connection to this history might be partly the problem here, but I have watched a lot of other history plays about other histories to which I also have no connection, and have been engrossed by them. So I do think it’s the dramatisation itself that’s the problem here.

It’s funny. The text itself is so fact-based, that I think if it was performed *de-costumed*, and on desks with mics and big tellies and etc. – deconstructed any way at all, in fact – it might work rather well. Sadly, this production opts for “a-historical” (which looks a bit like it might mean “let’s hope no one notices it’s contemporary”) evening dress (a staple costume for UK student drama set in the 1920s, for example) costume drama.

I promise this isn’t me just wanting everything to have mics and big tellies. It’s just that the costumes – for me – set up an expectation of character and drama, which then (for me) failed to materialise, but, meanwhile, the production shows every sign of believing either that they already have, or that they will soon, as soon as the fact have been delivered.

There is a bit of (admittedly hugely schematic) personal interest too. But this runs into what seems to be my other perennial issue with the Slovakian theatre this week – its unabashed, rampant sexism. There is a beautiful illustration of that here: the first woman to walk on stage – she’s playing a liberated, free-thinking, modern, progressive Hungarian intellectual (although her only role in this piece is as a love interest whose interior life is only noted because it irritates Him) – she walks on and throws a handful of glittering confetti into the air above her and it sparkles down around her. It’s actually quite a nice effect, objectively (if “nice” can be “objective”). But MY GOD! It’s like calling bullshit on Manic Pixie Dream Girls never happened. (And, let’s be scrupulous: it’s not like it has stopped it happening Anglo- theatre either.) But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it made quite so flagrant. Later on, there’s a bit where Slavic Intellectual Dream Girl is disappointed. She leaves the stage with: actually a forlorn little glitter-trail wafting in her wake. This is also intentional. It’s like she’s literally Tinkerbell. (Who, of course, being an actual pixie is presumably beyond reproach? I dunno.) I should say, in the defence of the production, that the whole is actually rather stylish. It doesn’t really work, and the actual acting feels somehow hamstrung (at least when played through surtitles) by the expositionary nature of the script. But there are definitely some nice flourishes, as we see in the press photos.

But still – yes – problematic. And, once more, I should foreground my belief that all criticism is necessarily subjective, and this, therefore, is deliberately so. (Does anyone else get the feeling I’m trying to avoid having to have an actual argument about this reivew? I do).

Then, dear reader, 1hr30 in, there was the interval, and, having *a lot* of work to do I opted not to see the second half. Which, I am assured by my colleagues, was absolutely no better. But I realise it does stop me actually being able to comment on the success or failure of the piece as a whole.

If you’re interested in the plot, it can all be found here, though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_Uprising_1848%E2%80%9349

Majdanské Denníky – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 18/06/15]

Verbatim drama is rapidly becoming *the* theatrical weapon of choice in Eastern European theatre, with Belarusia, Russia, Romania, and now Ukraine, all using the form to present urgent versions of events and give voice to those who would otherwise have none.

All of which puts something like Majdanské Denníky (Maidan Diaries) rather beyond the purview of ordinary “theatre criticsm”. What we can say is that director Andriy May and dramaturg/(we’d say author) Natalia Vorozhbyt have definitely created a piece of verbatim theatre. It is 2hrs long (with interval), and performed on a stage which is bare except for a small child’s wooden rocking horse and a mirror at the back – part because the company rehearsed in a ballet studio and got used to one and part because it reflects the audience back at itself.

They sing the Ukrainian National Anthem:



And the anthem of the EU (although without words. Surprised the below one has them, tbh):



(were I a music critic, I might have some stern things to say about the funereal pace with which they treated lovely Ludwig van...)

The Ukrainian, what? protest? revolution? in Maidan Square is one of those bits of recent European history that takes a bit of getting your head around. In the piece the company start by asking audience members [in English] “Do you know what happened in Maidan?” To be honest, just this question (or maybe, plus others like it) could form a whole show by itself.

The piece does give us information, although rapidly, so you’re required to be pretty cognisant with the facts beforehand. And there are very few facts, before the propaganda kicks in, from both sides (in real life, not in the piece).

Viktor Yanukovych definitely refused to sign the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement (“Protests originally erupted in November 2013 after President Viktor Yanukovych chose not to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union at the summit of the Eastern Partnership at Vilnius”)

People definitely gathered in Maidan square protesting this refusal (actually, I think Maidan *means* square – and little Maidan is Ukranian for “stage”, neatly). Then:

“A period of relative calm in the anti-government demonstrations in Kiev ended abruptly on 18 February 2014, when protesters and police clashed. At least 82 people were killed over the following few days, including 13 policemen; more than 1,100 people were injured.”

The “at least” in the above-cited Wikipedia entry – and, y’know, why not Wikipedia? – is flatly contradicted on stage where the figure of the dead is set at at least 200.

The piece does not greatly concern itself with the wider facts, however. This is very much first-person testimony, performed honestly by the actors, who were also at the protests.  And, for the most part, the stories they tell are plausible, often unspectacular, vivid recollections.  It feels as if there’s been a conscious effort to avoid either too-cinematic a narrative arc, or too much sensational detail. Instead the stories feel varied and diffuse, and the piece feels more like it spreads gradually than “hurtles towards its explosive finale”.

The company do not appear to be fascists. Or in the pay of the American government (like the American government would ever fund theatre!). The piece steers entirely clear of anything about the subsequent civil war in Ukraine, and has even less to say about Russia (topically, David Cameron is in Bratislava right now, apparently, having a meeting prompted by precisely this Russia question). There is a point where one of the actors asks – I’d have thought the (unseen, unstaged) interviewer, but people in the audience replied, affirmatively – is it ok if I speak Russian?

Indeed, the conclusion of the piece – yes, funny to think about verbatim theatre having “conclusions”, but – the last word, is given to someone who pins their hopes on communism, international brotherhood and love; the things he experienced first-hand for the first time in the square.

Mladý Stalin – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 16/06/15]

Here’s an unwise bet: I reckon Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Młody Stalin (Young Stalin) would do really well at the National Theatre (the British one). If we reproduced exactly what I saw last night, I think mainstream British audiences would absolutely lap it up. And I’m not talking with my rather far-fetched *everybody-will-love-postdramatic-theatre-just-you-wait-and-see* hat on, here either. I reckon people would love it in the same way they love Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead or The History Boys.

Young Stalin is a big, broad, often very funny narrative drama offering a fast paced bio-play of Stalin’s life from his first marriage in 1904 to a point sometime after the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London, 1907 (yes, in the church that once stood where that Tesco Metro is now). Like a Shakespeare history the play compresses the action so tightly that you imagine all the episodes it depicts must have somehow fitted into a very busy week.

The stroke of brilliance here is the humour. The piece begins with young Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Stalin’s Georgian birth-name, innit) giving a speech at his wedding in which he accuses his violent, abusive mother of having slept with every man in the room except his (absent) father. It’s at once cruel, probably based on some sort of painstaking research, and, crucially, very very funny. It’s the sort of bloody-minded sardonic humour and swagger that makes you love a character. Guilty pleasure, sure, but I guess we’re ok because he’s not actually Stalin yet.

Słobodzianek plays an amusing balancing game around the various pitfalls of writing historical plays. The first scene of the second half finds young Stalin in Vienna – he’s chasing across Europe trying to meet up with Lenin. The scene opens in a café with a young artist about to do his exams chatting away to Wittgenstein. Then it dawns on you who the artist is... *Then*, Freud and Jung walk in having a (surprisingly pertinent, ta dah!) conversation about the Oedipus and Electra complexes – which, when you consider Stalin’s wedding speech, is particularly amusing. *THEN!* Karl Krauss, Arthur Schnitzler, and some other guy turn up too... It goes from being maybe an amusing pastiche of Stoppard’s Travesties or a Terry Johnson play to an all out absurdist send up of even embarking on such an enterprise. There’s a tension too between the knowing humour and what we also know about the way the rest of the 20th Century will unfold. All the laughter here, even at pure silliness, is pitch black.

The play also does a good job of sketching the internal struggles between the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in Russian Communism. And, what is striking – particularly in the light of seeing The Stone again so recently – is the absolute centrality of class. It is striking that when the Russian communists all sign a loan agreement with a useful idiot American, the majority of their professions is “journalist”. Only Stalin signs himself “robotnik” (worker). Between this and The Stone – and I really can’t praise the dramaturgy of this festival highly enough for putting together so many pieces in dialogue with each other, which are, en mass, really building a sense of Europe, its drama, and its history – one really does get a chilling sense of the sheer horror that can be unleashed when one bloke with a chip on his shoulder somehow manages to claw their way to power. The play also notes briefly Stalin’s concern at the high proportion of Jewish revolutionaries. And again, we hear just that faintest of whispers from history of what was coming, and, worse, the sense of just how powerful that feeling of continent-wide anti-Semitism must have been.

As productions go, Ondrej Spišák’s is remarkably straight. František Lipták’s set is just a roughly painted, three-sided room with the same tables and chairs strewn around for various cafés and meeting rooms across Europe. The performances are wonderful. I have a real soft spot for the intensity with which the Poles apply themselves to naturalism (hell, I’m English, I grew up on intensely applied naturalism, right?), but there are also sly winks to comedy and a knowingness about some of the scenes that impart their stories through jokes about how they’re presenting the history. It’s a really nicely handled, appealling mix. There’s also a fine amount of Georgian-sounding songs and dancing, along with Russian songs, Polish songs, and even an American burlesque of the Internationale.

Indeed, the production is *so* straight that I suspect my smart Polish friends will have their heads in their hands that I liked this so much. I’m sure in the Polish theatre scene this sort of work is seen as entirely reactionary. But, Euro-Kontext again: I’m British, and as such you can get a lot by me as long as it’s got some good jokes in it. And, y’know, for me; rather than coming at the piece from a position of eye-rolling wearniness, it’s all a fresh perspective for me.

What, contextually, we don’t get here in Slovakia, however, and what we wouldn’t get in London, is the building where this originally played in Poland. The Warsaw Drama Theatre is slap bang in the centre o Warsaw, in one of the arms of the “Stalin Wedding Cake”. A vast, monstrous skyscraper essentially built by Poland’s Soviet occupiers as “a present”. And, you maybe don’t get quite so fully that bitterness that the Poles feel against the Russians, who promised that Warsaw Uprising support, and then sat, cynically, on the other side of the Wisła and allowed the Nazis to annihilate them and destroy the city, before sweeping in themselves.

That said, for all that lack of immediate context the final moments of the play are superbly chilling. Stalin has returned to Georgia and is alone in a café apart from three musicians. He is already top dog in his town, people are clearly frightened of him already. And he instructs the band to play. They do, and he just dances. A strange, sad, intense, expressive native dance. Without knowing it’s Stalin it might almost be nothing. And it could be anyone dancing. And in that blurring of possibilities, that’s where the genius is. Maybe it could be anyone.

Bačova žena – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 15/06/15]

So this is interesting. I went into Bačova žena knowing next to nothing. I knew the title translates as “The Shepherd’s Wife” and that, like Nevesta hôľ, it was directed by SND artistic director Roman Polák.

I came out desperate to know when it was written. 1928, apparently (the same year as Journey’s End, Machinal, Pioneers in Ingolstadt and The Suicide). Apparently the play has some standing in the field of Slovakian dramatic literature, and, perhaps more pertinent to my understanding of this production (or lack thereof), has a considerable stage history, with productions exploring everything from and ethnographic to “symbolic pure, aesthetically clear emphasis” stagings. I would say Polák’s current production errs more to the latter end of this spectrum.

But. What was most fascinating to me here was just how much I Could. Not. Read. This. Production. Don’t get me wrong, I could see the perfectly serviceable English surtitles. I knew what was happening throughout – woman is told her husband (formerly a shepherd) has died abroad, woman marries again, woman's first husband was not dead, comes back to Slovakia, and has bought the estate on which she lived with him, and now still lives with her new husband (also a shepherd). Chaos ensues. She stabs herself and dies. End – No. It was the actual register of the production itself that was somehow just alien enough to completely throw me. I’ll describe it: on the large-ish stage of the studio (think: the Dorfman) there’s a high black wall only a few metres away from the front row, cutting off the whole rear of the stage. The wall is at a slight angle to the raked seating. Across this wall a slope runs down from left to right. There are guillotine-action doors through which the characters enter and exit. Occasionally retractable rungs glide out of the wall, allowing people to climb the wall.

The performers are all dressed in black and white. The men in contemporary shirts and suits, the women in close-fitting versions of peasant or nun costumes, their heads covered with something suggesting again the middle ages or a nunnery. The paintwork on the slope is scuffed and retouched. Is that a deliberate design idea or unconcern? Did it feel a bit wrong, nit-picking about that detail? Absolutely. I have no idea what SND’s annual budget is. How very Western to worry about a paint-job. But then, we do worry in Britain. This scuffed paint really made me think about sets I’d seen recently. The sheer flawlessness of the shiny glass number for the Almeida Oresteia. It’s all very well to bang on about needing everything you see on stage to be deliberate, but my God, how very spoilt we all are. How decadent to have *budget* being part of what we *read* on stage.

However, let’s leave that confusion aside for the time being, because I was being slightly inaccurate earlier. If I’d known where I was meant to be with the play, then I think I’d have known where I was meant to be with the production. And I did not know. You’ve read the précis, right? The language (at least in translation – so this could be no indication) seemed frank and without subtext. People explained what was going on to each other. The characters move the plot along in front of your very eyes, maybe only ever one step away from actually saying “Wouldn’t it be awful if [thing that happens next] were to happen”. And, for all my scepticism, I did find the honesty about how plots work quite refreshing and relaxing. None of that mad English desire to have everyone talk endless about tea with everything actually happening *in subtext*. Nah. “How do you know your husband died? You never closed his eyes yourself” is what we’ve got here. (Truly, a proper *translation* into the correct period English would have that line as: “Oh dear, Eva, you seem to have forgotten to pass me the marmalade. Don’t worry, I’ll get it myself now...”.)

[the acting, from what I could tell – and I was doing a lot of surtitle reading, don’t forget, so I wasn't always looking at it – was actually very fine. Committed, convincing, never less than entirely watchable...]

But, quite aside from production, dialogue and plot, there’s *meaning* to contend with. What the hell is the play *for*? Why’s it been written? This is something that’s been discussed a fair bit over the last two days, and the inescapable conclusion seems to be just a complete ideological divide between people who think what it says is beautiful, and people who think what it says is actually rather sexist and reactionary. The ending of the play essentially feels instructional. That titular shepherd’s wife, Eva, takes her own life, seems to be broadly smiled upon as a course to take – a lot like Luise Miller’s poisoned lemonade honourable suicide in Kabale und Liebe, a bit like Hedda’s tragic? romantic? pragmatic? desperate? suicide... *Obviously* this is problematic. Like, the poor woman has done *nothing wrong*. There are characters in drama who murder their children and get off lighter than this. She kills herself because she remarried after she was told that her husband was dead. And then he turns out not to be. Frankly, husband number one is a complete prick from the word go anyway, as is husband number two. In terms of where sexual politics are in the world of the play, the most telling scene is perhaps the one where the two blokes meet up to have a chat about which of them the wife should now live with. The wife is not invited to their little chat. I mean, really...? And all this is staged without irony. Or apology. Or any internal self-critique.

The programme of the Festival has this to say in the play’s defence: “This perfectly concentrated tragedy of this Slovak classic has inspired generations of dramatists... This intimate chamber drama features inherent encrypted archetypal elements, the characters are like cut-outs from ancient tragedies or the Bible. The potential of the dramatic template is still a potential discovery for the wider European cultural area.”

And, you know, I feel genuinely sad that I’m on the other side of this mental fence where I just can’t quite do the ideological gymnastics necessary to get over or around the fact that the basic deliberate premises and trajectories of the play are pretty much diametrically opposite to mine. At no point was I bored watching, I don’t even think I could say I disliked it. But at the same time, I was more troubled by- than at home to- the ideas.  I think "the wider European cultural area" might be best advised to ignore this "dramatic template".

We Want You To Watch – National Theatre, London

[seen (in preview) 11/06/15]

In publicity blurb, I think it says that We Want You To Watch is *about* *confronting* *Violent Pornography*. Which sounds like a total laugh, and is obviously excellent marketing copy: I definitely wasn’t worried about going to see it. Nuh uh.

But, no! We Want You To Watch turns out to be about as joyous and life-affirming an experience you can have in a theatre while the world is still in the miserable shape it’s in.

I can imagine that there are CRITICS who are cross about We Want You To Watch [I promise I hadn’t read a single other review at time-of-writing]. PORNOGRAPHY is a BIG SUBJECT. There are ARGUMENTS! There are BINARIES that need to be ORDERED. PROS and CONS which have to be PROPERLY EXAMINED.

We Want You To Watch at once acknowledges that play, which they haven't tried to make, and all those arguments against their not having down so.  Indeed, We Want You To Watch anticipates pretty much every argument against it. And also the arguments that people might expect the piece itself to make.  And while it does put information on stage, tonnes of it, it does so playfully, sincerely, insincerely, and playfully again. It is, in short, theatre.

But it’s also A PLAY with A PLOT! Sort of. In my head, it was sort of about a kind of pair of time-travelling ultra-feminists from the future, or now, and/or not time-travelling at all, who both did and did not live in a consequence free universe with Very Serious Consequences. And it had dancing. And movement. Brilliant movement.

At one point there’s a bit where Queen Elizabeth II does a few-minute-long movement sequence to explain what sex should be like. It is literally the best, most communicative, and *actually moving, beautiful thing* you’ll see on stage all year. Maybe. I thought it was awesome, anyway. Massive respect to every single person who made that moment ever happen, and HAPPEN AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE FFS. I mean, seriously. It would have been great, and brilliant, and accurate, if it had been any female character on any stage anywhere. But this was QEII at the NT. Come on. That’s how you do iconoclasm. (By really *not* taking the piss. And *still* being funny.)

Anyway, enough of die Frivolität.

According to Andrew Haydon’s Stupid Law of The Stage: Whatever Something Says It Is, That’s What It’s Not.  Therefore, while this is nominally a play about pornography – violent pornography – to me it felt more like a play about capitalism, using pornography as a metaphor. (Although, thinking about it, it's also then a play which uses the failure of capitalism as a metaphor to talk about pornography.)

What I think is *brilliant* about the way that this piece operates, is that it makes a virtue of its own inevitable failure. You *can’t* make a play about violent pornography that “succeeds”. What would that endgame even be? And, similarly, the makers* probably attack the positions they assume, maybe even more than they attack pornography itself? [On reflection, probably not, but still, the sense of postitions tabled and then retrenched-from, given almost physical form, is intellectually and viscerally dazzling.]  Moreover, though, the piece doesn’t *really* come out and say either that pornography is *wrong* or that it should be *banned*.  Instead it makes a compelling case that it’s hardly the best thing in the world, and does table the more real worry that we have no idea what the effect of the super-proliferation of it will be on the world.

In this, it’s like the ideal play about capitalism. Yes, maybe even captialism (or pornography) has its moments, but underneath those moments are ongoing, real harm, and they are connected. And, no, of course you can’t really ban it, per se.  Instead of making those arguments, We Want You To Watch *shows* us the better alternatives, and makes us *feel* that possibility. “We’re not ‘Anti-Sex’!” they say at one point. And, no, clearly they’re not. The penultimate scene of the piece – to my mind, at least – starkly evokes a lot of the rest of what’s wrong with the-world-in-which-pornography-exists, and suggests the pretty simple, workable solution of people being nicer to each other.

In Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, Engels proposes that: “The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished,” it withers away.”

Such is the argument of We Want You To Watch, with “state power” replaced by “pornography”. It will not need to be abolished, it will wither away. Given *a lot* of other preconditions. But, it’s a hell of a compelling vision.

[We Want You To Watch was made by RashDash – who are usually Helen Goalen and Abbi Greenland – with Alice Birch (usually a writer), Caroline Steinbeis (Director), Oliver Townshend (Designer), Ben and Max Ringham (Music), lighting is by Beky Stoddart and sound Alex Caplen. Adam Charteris, Lloyd Everitt, Bettrys Jones, Helena Lymbery and Peter Marinker also performed, and maybe helped devise as well. I don’t know who did what to make this, I wasn’t there when it was made.]

Bláznove zápisky – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 14/06/15]

Do you ever get that thing while watching theatre when your expectations start (unaccountably) high, and the entire duration of the show can be traced as a steadily downwards-moving convex arc? Bláznove zápisky is a physical-theatre/clowning adaptation of Gogol’s Diary of a Madman, and, well, let’s charitably suggest that it was suffering *transfer difficulties* *at the very least* on Sunday.

Part of the reason for my high expectations was the collaboration between Kote Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre, Tbilisi, and Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, Modena. It’s stupid to generalise about nations’ theatres, I know. But, nonetheless, I *really* like the Georgians, God bless ‘em. Somehow some of the most gifted, dedicated, talented performers I’ve ever seen (based on a sample so small as to be insignificant) hail from the former-Soviet republic. And I suspect, thanks to the work of Romeo Castellucci, I’ve actually seen a lot more Italian performers than I ever think I have.

But anyway, it was not to be. It seemed to start funny-and-charming, coasting on an incredibly high level of good will (and the hope that the previous night’s programming success would be repeated). But, gradually, the charm started to ebb away and the good will with it.

I could note that retaining the incidental detail that Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin’s hated boss is “a Jew” didn’t kick things off too promisingly (unless there’s production context there of which I’m unaware – Jewish director makes political point, for example). Or that, well – ok, this is *obviously* a story about objectification (or at least one could read it that way, in this production that aspect stands furthest out by a country mile), *but* no one had a gun to the head of director Levan Tsuladze *demanding* that he play up to it, did they? Yes, it’s a story about a anti-hero whose male-gaze we follow to the essentially powerless, voiceless woman (sure, she’s his social superior, and he ends up locked in an asylum), but somehow we’re sort of asked to condone his obsessive love here. Are we really meant to root for him in his unreasonable pursuit of this woman?

The company have done a pretty thorough job on transforming the original into their own thing, and for a while some of the physical theatre stage effects work well (although not nearly as well as in the spectacular photographs on the Kote Marjanishvili website and above/below – on tour, they’re much more in the tradition of likeably shambolic than precision-beautiful). Gradually, though, the slightly corrosive, wearying sexual politics, and the dragging out of the narrative do begin to grate. And then grate harder. And then harder still until by the end you’re actually quite cross.

Still, nice pics.

Also, THIS:

Kameň – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 14/06/15]

Now here’s an interesting and exciting thing. Kameň is Národné Divadlo, Praha (National Theatre, Prague)’s production of Marius von Mayenburg’s Der Stein (The Stone), which I first saw in Ramin Gray’s superb production for the Royal Court, back in 2009 (interesting to re-read that review by six-years-ago me, too. Blimey, I used to elide text and production *a lot*).

Did you see it? Or the original at the Schaubühne? Very briefly: the plot concerns a house in the former East Germany. We see scenes from 1934, 1953, 1993 (and other intermediate years in this production?), as the house is acquired from its Jewish owners by a non-Jewish German family, escaped from to the West, and then returned to post-Mauerfall. Gradually it emerges that the story that Witha has been telling her daughter, Heidrun, and that Heidrun has in turn been telling her own daughter Hannah – that they bought the house to help out their Jewish friends escaping the Nazis, that they weren’t party members, that Witha’s husband Wolfgang *definitely didn’t shoot himself when the Russians entered the town, beating back the Nazis*. That *The Stone* had been thrown through the window of the house by Nazis, not by mistake by Germans thinking that Jewish people still lived there.

Again, the title of this festival – Eurokontext – couldn’t be more apt. It’s properly fascinating to sit in Slovakia, watching Czechs, perform a German play, wrestling with the communist and Nazi past. There are already so many layers right there. Czechoslovakia’s shared history, Slovakia’s horrifying deal with Germany to *pay the Nazis* for every Jew they deported from Slovakia to the death camps, their time all together behind the Iron Curtain. The cognitive dissonance of watching a foreign play in *the wrong* foreign language.

And, fascinating again, how the changed context – from a habitual stamping ground and my native language at the Royal Court to an entirely unfamiliar language of which I know about five words (two of which are National and Theatre) – but maybe also the intervening six years, made such a massive impact on what I thought the play was about. Six years ago the thing that really made an impact on me was a story about the Germans lying to themselves about their Nazi past. (Exactly a month after I posted that review I went to Berlin for the first time.) Now, while *obviously* that is something that happens in the play – and is the Big Reveal (but not big surprise) of the play – on second viewing, in 2015, it feels secondary to a lot of the other levels happening here... Michal Dočekal’s production is about as different from Gray’s as it’s possible for two productions of the same play to be. Here’s the UK one. Just look:

The genius of Ramin’s concept was that (as far as I remember) no one could enter or leave that white box stage(?) once the play had started. Moreover, there were no costume changes. Period was evoked (as far as I remember) by *context* and maybe a bit of age-acting. But each character was dressed as if frozen in time, but doomed to play out whole different scenes from that one vantage point. Dočekal’s version irons all this out, having entrances, exits, different costumes for different time periods, etc. Similarly, the set for this Czech version is the exact opposite of a plain white box, it is ornate, dark, shimmering in places with burnished gold. It’s like a mansion designed by Klimt. In concessions to non-naturalism, the back wall of this echoey hall moves backwards at one point, and then forwards – past its original position – later, pushing the performers almost to the edge of this notional room. In my review of Ramin’s production...

[and, yes, I hate it when other critics compare one production through the lens of another, but, here, I’m afraid it’s also exactly how I watched the play. And at least I have the space to unpack the impulse, right? So it doesn’t turn into one line saying: “Ramin Gray’s production was better/worse/too-different-to-compare...”]

Anyway, in my review of Ramin’s prodution I suggested that it’d have been nice to have a bit more of an accretion of stage mess. At the time I was still very much in love with Felicitas Brucker’s staging of Hamlet is Dead... and immoderately wanted to see that aesthetic applied *everywhere* (as it happens, Gray, with Ravenhill, did exactly that a month later with Over There – what a great month or so, incidentally, that was at the Royal Court...). Anyway, Dočekal’s version does indeed have mess, although, in keeping with the aesthetic, it’s dry mess: masonry, cardboard boxes, and a steady fall of papers, or leaves, or ashes from the flies, and it works well enough – the papers/leaves/ashes especially, for all that they might represent – but I feel six years on I should at least tell Ramin he was right all along.

What Dočekal’s production (or watching it in Slovakia, or watching it performed by Czechs, or watching it for a second time, or watching it six years older, or watching it with a terrible Tory government in Britain) made much more vivid to me, is how this is not just a play about the Nazis and Germany and denial, but also how much it is about class. I think the most chilling thing anyone’s said to me all year was during my interview with Shermin Langhoff and Jens Hillje at the Gorki when one of them matter-of-factly explained, “well, of course, *here* we gassed our whole bourgeoisie”. They weren’t making light of the Holocaust *at all*. But they were presenting it in stark class terms. Of course Berlin had “Aryan” bourgeoisie and a Jewish proletariat too, but in Hitler’s the rhetoric was very much about “Rich Jews”: *They* have more than *you*. Why should *they* get all the good stuff? *They are crippling *our* country... Further examples can be found in today’s Daily Mail relating to asylum seekers, those on benefits, etc. but the very fundamental difference between Hitler and the Daily Mail was that he was fostering upwardly-directed class resentment. Rather than getting the lower middle classes to turn on the very poor, he directed their anger, and the anger of the workers, upwards against a “Jewish banking conspiracy”. His rhetoric probably a lot closer to Plan B’s Ill Manors than either would be happy about, I suspect (substitute “Jew-” for “rich-” and you’ve got half the ethos right there...). They were the National *Socialists*, after all.

So what you get from the interplay of characters The Stone is a much more complicated analysis than I first gave it credit for. Wolfgang acquires his Jewish superior’s house, and probably also betrays his plans to leave to his local SA or SS group. While doing so, Mieze, the wife of the (unseen) Jewish boss – in this production – is older than Witha, knowing and even slightly superior in attitude. Dignified, but still arch. Not just sympathetic, but also slightly snobby. It’s quite a brilliant way to play those scenes. It is then Heidrun’s sharp-elbowed middle-class determination to hang on to property that also resonates. And the legal backing by which this can be achieved – turfing the East German Stephanie and her grandfather out of their house because in reunified Germany she has all the correct paperwork.

If anything, watching here in ex-Czechoslovakia, what you really feel most – even after two dictatorships – is the extent to which the failure of communism is a catastrophe. (Don’t worry, I’m not all misty-eyed for secret police and no elections, although, Christ, given Britain’s electorate, it isn’t half tempting...) But, yes, if anything this version of the play shows history, not as extraordinary events, but a series of small but relentless instances of families just looking out for their own, whatever the cost.

Prečo Eva – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 13/06/15]

Following on from the mad Slovakian epic, Nevesta hôľ, Ubik Group from Théâtre de Liège’s Pourquoi Eve vient-elle chez Adam ce soir? is the perfect theatrical palette cleanser. Short (1hr), light, fluffy, funny, stylish, sweet, but with enough content to keep the brain properly engaged, it’s exactly what you need after 3hrs30 of *proper*. (It would do brilliantly in a late-ish slot at Summerhall during the Edinburgh Fringe, for example.)

The set-up feels quite familiar: we the audience are seated (in the SND’s *brilliant* studio space) facing a small room. It has a fourth wall with mirrored windows, so we gaze at our dim, slightly warped reflections waiting for the thing to start. Lights up inside the box reveal a man sitting in a cluttered room, the walls absolutely plastered with photos, posters, newspaper articles. From my seat I can only see the right hand wall: a picture of Lenin, a poster for Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Stage Left, indeed. Apparently on the other side are Nixon, Americans, etc.

The man’s thoughts speak to us in voiceover. He’s telling us that he likes cold coffee but also hot coffee. We’re instantly reminded of the French language’s ability to make the most banal thought sound like elegant philosophy. Indeed, I do wonder if a lot of the charm and fun of this piece for me is just the simple mismatch between the Pooterish, pedantic English voice reading the surtitles in my head, and the cool, louche Frenchman speaking. Whatever it is, it’s very funny.

Also: arty. We’ve got the alienated performer behind a see-thru fourth wall (cf., oh, so many things), and also the recorded voiceover – later, also mimed to, and then sometimes replaced with microphones and live speaking (in a theatre. People actually speaking live! Imagine!) – reminding us, perhaps, of Susanne Kennedy’s glorious oeuvre. The programme notes told us that it is inspired by the works of Michail Bulgakov, Woody Allen, Andrej Tarkovsky and Ingrid Bergmann [sic – and, given an obvious allusion to The Seventh Seal, wrong]. It’s a great reading list, but not one where I’m going to get many trainspotting points for picking up the references, annoyingly. That said, having known the list going in – and for some reason, having mentally added David Lynch to it – it also occurred to me that it would be especially funny if what the voiceover of the man’s thoughts was saying was taken from the neurotic thought-processes of a Woody Allen routine. Something like “Jean Luc-Godard’s Annie Hall”...

There isn’t *a plot* so much as a series of routines. A woman turns up (set, written and directed by Cyril Aribaud, Emilia Tillberg, Ya’l Steinmann, Anja Tillber and Sylvain Daï – also performed by the last two) and quirky, perky, movie-referential dialogue ensues. As does a rather lovely Bollywood pastiche dance sequence. There is, in short, *much silliness*.

In terms of *analysis*, as you might have guessed, I haven’t got a lot. A motif that did catch my attention was repeated references to an owl. This is probably lifted from something else, that I haven’t seen – I was hoping Twin Peaks, but probably not.

The ending is strangely beautiful and calm. Having earlier twice discussed the a theory of Timothy Leary (“Did you know you have 6 to 12 minutes of brain activity after everything stops? A kind of a conscious dream. It’s infinitely longer than one second in the state of awakeness. For example, I wake up at seven, then I go back to sleep and have intricate dreams that seem hours long. Then I wake up again and it's one minute past seven. That few minutes of brain activity could be your entire life. You are that old man who’s looking back...”) at the close, the man, Adam, offers his own kind of brain-life at the point of death soliloquy:

“I walk through the door

A big owl is watching me

I’m in a forest and there’s nothing

No plot

no conspiracy

no secret

no universal truth

no ending

no illusion

no reality

no dream

nothing

Only the forest and the owl

That’s it, in the end

nothing else

I’m walking and then

I can’t hear my footsteps any longer”

FIN

Nevesta hôľ – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 12/06/15]

There are *at least* two reviews to be written here. I’ll do my best.

Ok, so, the story of Nevesta hôľ is, I think, something like this: boy (Libor) and girl (Zuna) meet in childhood. Boy moves away(?), grows up, and is appointed game warden of some Slovakian forest back where Girl lives. Girl is all betrothed to some guy. Oh, wait, to several guys? She’s already married? Oh, her betrothed is already married? I. Just. Don’t. Know. Anyway, in spite of all these confusing odds, boy and girl seem to get together. They share conversations about their confusing pasts, in even more confusing flashback. But her wild nature is all troubling to him. Then she throws him over for some masculine essentialist. He’s sad, of course, but imagine his surprise WHEN SHE TURNS OUT TO ALSO BE A WEREWOLF!!! AND THIS IS BEFORE THE INTERVAL!!!!!

František Švantner’s 1946 novel, The Bride of the Ridge, lovingly, painstakingly adapted and directed by SND (Slovenské Národné Divadlo/National Theatre of Slovakia) artistic director Roman Polák, seems to be a bewildering beast of of a thing. The adaptation runs at 3hrs30 and, I’m guessing (no, I haven’t read the book. It isn’t even translated into English as far as I can see) it runs pretty closely to the original. Apparently Švantner (b. 1912, d. – a year younger than me – 1950) was the Slovakian García Márquez; a magical-realist, whose prose was inextricably tied up in the soil and landscape of his homeland.

A WEREWOLF, THOUGH!!! SHE TURNS OUT TO BE AN HONEST TO GOODNESS WEREWOLF!!! Actually, though, I completely bought into that. No problem. If you can’t discern a metaphor on stage when you see one, you might as well go home now.

Now, English-me did start off with some reservations about the implied gender-politics of the thing. There’s only one named female character in the play. Every other woman on stage is defined as “Miller’s Wife” or “Libor’s Mother”, or, in an instance which jumps the equality shark “Sister of Shepherd’s Wife”. Know your place, ladies! In strict fairness, though, the naming of the blokes is pretty scattergun, some having names, and some having jobs. Four war-happy Russian rapist soldiers all get their own names and titles (“Earl Boris” and so on...).

But, in the scheme of the play, is Zuna not far and away the most realised, powerful character on the stage? And, more than this, beyond the descriptions of her “wide hips” and “full breasts”, isn’t she really just a big old stand-in for Slovakia herself? Zuna’s so tied to the nature, the forest... What’s that thing she says about ugly badgers?

“Even an ugly badger will awaken joy in you if you understand its anxiety and help it.”

Exactly. Isn’t it borderline madness to try to object to the reactionary characterisation of a woman who says things like that and wrestles naked in the forest with the boy-werewolves?

I’m glad you mentioned the naked wrestling...

No. Silly. Don’t be. Yes, ok, in strictly modern terms, maybe it’s not unproblematic, and if you were so-minded, you could find the gender essentialism and the female bits of the stage nudity (if anyone’s actually naked, I thought I spotted some flesh-coloured underwear) tricky. But on the other hand, isn’t it all pretty equal, gung-ho wrestling madness fun, while still set in something recognisably truthful about mid-C20th Slovakia’s (obviously) patriarchal society?

What about the anti-Semitism?

You know what, I think that reveals more about you than the play.

That’s a serious charge. There’s only one character with a Jewish-sounding surname, he’s the one who’s depicted as caring only about money – pathologically so...

And you associate that with Judaism?

No. I associate it with anti-Semitic tropes, and note that Slovakia has a long and troubling history with anti-semitism (this news report from the year the novel was published). It’s not impossible that they’re staging a piece of national art that has an anti-Semitic stereotype in it...

Well, thank God we British would never do anything like that.

It’s true, you do see things in starker relief when you’re not at home. Perhaps we’re all too used to the domestic racism of our own countries to question it strongly enough.

Ok, so, yes, it *might* have a minor character who conforms to anti-Semitic stereotypes, *if the character is even meant to be Jewish*. He might be an Austrian stereotype for all you know. Or wherever Slovakia’s equivalent of Scotland is. Also, what about that bit where the hero, Libor, refuses to go along with the villagers’ plan to kill him? Can we maybe stop worrying about a national culture you don’t really understand, but seem a bit willing to point fingers at, and talk about the thing *as theatre*.

Alright. It’s too long. And the staging is pretty old-fashioned.

Oh, fuck off. You *liked* it. And the staging reminded you of virtually everything you’ve seen at the NT in GB.

Ok, yes I did. It’s definitely maybe half an hour too long, and there are a few bits – particularly the ending, which felt more like a shrug, in terms of delivery – that could have been tweaked, but yes, in spite of myself, I did rather like it.

Why even have it be “in spite of yourself”? It’s a fine, fine staging. The main stage of the Slovakian National Theatre looks like the Olivier, (but bigger?) and Pavel Borák’s minimalist set – a raked square sloping down toward a kind of onstage lake or river, all in black – looks like, well, like an opera of King Lear on the heath, or something. Indeed, there was something about the whole that made it feel almost like it might have been a prequel to King Lear (it would certainly explain his children, although not how he comes to be king).

Can I just mention the recorded howling?

I LOVED the recorded howling. When Zuna goes off into the forest, and we discover she’s a werewolf, or some sort of elemental spirit of the forest, the nation, or something, there are actual, full-on, amplified recorded wolf howls! It’s properly great. If you’ve got your disbelief suspended, honestly it’s terrific fun.

But what about the story. Surely it meanders a bit *too* much? I mean, given a decent dramaturg or script editor, surely the whole thing could have been trimmed by about an hour without losing anything invaluable. Various minor, illustrative scenes could have been cut or condensed, it wasn’t even always clear where the story was going.

But didn’t you love that? I know it’s not the trendy thing to talk about “story” any more, but given that we’re both English, and therefore addicted to narrative, didn’t you find it geniunely exciting that from some point in the second hour onwards, you no longer had any idea where this story was going. What it was even a story *about*. You didn’t recognise the shape of the story any more. When was the last time you can honestly say that happened? You thought it was going to be this boy-gets-girl thing, then you think it’s maybe a boy-loses-girl-to-rival thing, and then, once she’s a werewolf, all bets are off.

But all those flashbacks! I mean, it didn’t help that often you didn’t even know who was in what time-stream. It’s not like they were properly flagged up or anything...

Pfft. You recognised them well enough to call them flashbacks. And didn’t the way that a flashback could walk on in the same way that a bloke in the next room might excite you? And anyway, what flashbacks they were! There’s a scene where we see, what? Zuma’s conception? Her mother is raped by four Russian soldiers all of whose throats she then rips out...

Do we trust stories men write where women are forever getting raped?

No. I’ve read that article and worried over it considerably. On the other hand, do we trust stories that somehow gloss over this horrific reality? It doesn’t take much historical knowledge to realise that Slovakia has been invaded repeatedly. It’s so central in Europe, that it feels as if the armies of much larger nations (Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungary, the list goes on and on...) have been tramping back and forth through here from time immemorial. And armies rape. It’s just a hideous fact. It seems slightly futile to object to this fact being written into a novel that is essentially dealing with a national identity. The way that this fact of life is woven into the fabric of a society is all the more fascinating and chilling for its being a commonplace. Yes, it’s written by a man, but it’s hardly invented by the author. I would argue that it’s most definitely *not* included to be “entertaining”, and it doesn’t happen on stage.

You’re going to claim this as a triumph of feminism soon...

You know...

Seriously?

Well, ok, granted it’s written, adapted, and directed by men. I’d argue that even if it appears to be Libor’s story – and the title in English problematically puts Zuma in the title, but calls her the Bride of the Ridge (the ridge being a geographical feature). I’d argue that its primary sense – that this is about a woman whom people want to marry – gets subverted into a literal sense that she is married already to the ridge itself. Which seems much more like equal marriage than the hereosexual religious version...

Is this still a useful discussion of the piece?

I have no idea. It’s very long now, though.

Epic. Inconclusive, a lot of fun in places, but maybe too much effort?

The play or the review?

Ta-dah!

This is the most widely used publicity shot. Hmmm.

Celibát – Nová Budova SND, Bratislava

[seen 12/06/15]

Ok, so I’m going to cheat. “The Celibate”, presented as the opening piece in Slovakia’s EuroKontext.sk festival, is in fact Ewald Palmetshofer’s Die Unverheiratete (from *German* to English, interestingly, “The Unmarried”), which I saw at Theatertreffen in May. And I don’t intend to re-review it *fully*, five weeks later.

What is fascinating, especially for a festival that has “context” in the title, is the extent to which exactly the same play and production changes, watching it in the main house of Slovakia’s National Theatre (*very* similar to the Olivier, which in turn was modelled on Epidaurus, right?). There was also the fact of my sitting in the fourth row from the stage here, instead of the back row of the gallery as I was at Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

The main effect I noticed of location on play is/was to do with the subject. Palmetshofer’s text relates the story of three generations of Austrian women: grandmother, mother, and daughter. In the last days of WWII, the grandmother betrays a deserting German soldier to the police (or SS?) and he is executed. The play intercuts her trial – told Martin Crimp-style, by a chorus of four more women – with her granddaughter telling us about various sexual encounters and her reading of a notebook the grandmother kept (during? After?) the trial; before the granddaughter’s mother was even born. There are also scenes of dialogue with the old woman in a nursing home.

Watching in Berlin, I suggested that the grandmother’s crime didn’t seem all that important in the grand scheme of the crimes being committed around her. Berlin isn’t a city that lets you forget what happened between 1933 and 1945 in Germany (and, from 1938, in Austria). In Slovakia – despite its own horrific war record – it feels much more possible to view the crime without the baggage of watching in Hitler’s former capital.

There was also the context of having seen the play before, and recently. As a result, this time I didn’t worry so much about trying to catch every surtitle in order to follow the story. And, interestingly, now knowing the basic shape of the play, its basic (if still slightly ambiguous) storyline, it was a much more relaxing experience. The brilliant and beauty of Robert Borgmann’s staging remained, but this time it felt possible to appreciate it much more fully. And also to rethink whether I really had a problem with the piece’s presentation of women. In this, it was interesting how much of an effect being close to the front had. Rather than *women*, one saw *individuals* much more clearly. Being able to see the faces of the four chorus members (they wear heavy whiteface make-up, and so presented almost no data to the back row of Haus der Berliner Festspiele) felt particularly like it changed one’s relationship to what they were doing. Much more detailed and less conceptual or impersonal. It’s interesting that, depending on one’s seat, both versions of this subjective reality feel absolutely true. Something we don’t get to discover all that often.

 So, yes, an apt start for a festival named for *context*.

[oddly, the different seat also completely inclined me toward different photos to most accurately reflect what I thought I'd just seen.  Really interesting.]

d(ARE) / Here Be Lions – Print Room at the Coronet, Notting Hill

[seen 10/06/15]

Written for Exeunt.


Removed due to threat of legal action.

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