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2010-09-16

Première of Hanoch Levin`s play

Ilustracja

Kajetan Wolniewicz, Lidia Bogaczówna, Monika Kufel i Karol Śmiały   

Teatr Tarnowski opened its new season on 11 September. On this occasion, the theater featured the première of Hanoch Levin`s play entitled “Szyc”. The play was produced with the cooperation of the BARAKAH Theater from Cracow.

The tragedy is a novelty on the Polish stage because its preview took place on 19 June this year in Cracow. The Tarnów-Cracow production can be safely counted as an important national event not only because of the fresh text, but above all, because of the successful production.

Hanoch Levin (died in 1999) was a modern Israeli writer, considered to be one of the most prominent play-wrights of the 20th century. In his plays, Levin is a ruthless critic of the Israeli reality. The message of his plays is universal, it refers to every place and environment in so-called “civilized” world, full of dehumanized, emotionless human relations. “Szyc” performed in Tarnów is a good example of it. The eponymous character of the play is an ordinary Jew, a small business owner, in many ways similar to characters typical of gross jokes. He is tired of his life, family and problems with marrying his not-so-pretty daughter, on which he looks like on a difficult-to-get-rid-of commodity. His wife – Cesia, on the other hand, suffers because of life disappointments, she feels unloved and unsatisfied sexually. Staying in her husband’s shadow throughout her life, Cesia subdues her own ambitions, which revive from time to time. Szeprahci, their daughter, does not feel any emotional bonds with her parents and, thus, desires to leave home and start to live on her own.

The performance drips with unrefined eroticism both on the level of vocabulary and choreography. In sex the characters of the play look for a cure to their disappointments, to monotony of the passing life. Moreover, sex is for them a way to acquire fortune or social position. They immerse in it only on the surface, in reality, each of them expects something in exchange.

The play is based on actors. It is actors who fill the scene, the rest is just addition. Jan Polewka and Lesław Kostka, the authors of the stage design, discreetly support the actors’ work with symbolical equipment like table and chairs, wedding canopy or a construction with a wheeled lavatory. Renata Przemyk, a well-known singer and composer, is the author of music in the play. She skillfully adjusted melodies in which Klezmer music reverberates with Balkan music.

Four actors: Kajetan Wolniewicz, Lidia Bogaczowna, Monika Kufel and Karol Śmiałek, create a harmonious group on stage. It is thanks to them that the play may be admired with bated breath. Even though the play is full of singing and dancing, just like musical, it contains satirical and comedy scenes with a big dash of grotesque. It carries anxiety, but the spectator is also convinced that he has just watched a good piece of artistic and theatrical work.

 

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