No One
Krum is a Polish production, produced by the TR Warazawa company. The
script (1972, by Hanoch Levin, Polish) concerns a bunch of people living their
lives mindlessly. Among the other effects of the fall of Communism was, apparently,
a proliferation of Eurotrash. The characters act like they're drugged out, although
we have no evidence that they are. As one woman tells the other, discussing
their prospects, "They're the men we were given and they're the ones we
have to take." And the women are no better. "Remember the ugliness
of our lives", another character says later, and we can see what he's talking
about. Krum and his friends court carelessly, marry arbitrarily, and dress like
Halloween.
The vision of Polish society is so bleak that the play's only meaningful development
comes when the hypochondriac discovers that he is, in fact, dying. His wife
abandons him. Only when Krum attends to his dying friend is there a spark of
the spirit.
Director Krzystof Warlikowski has taken an uninspired script and drained it
of all tension, padding it with silence and dragging it out to two-and-three-quarters-hours-without-intermission.
They actors often face us, and even when they don't, they don't communicate
with one another. They're lifeless cartoons, and they behave as if they've been
assigned mannerisms.
Warlikowski has thrown in some gimmicks to liven things up. One character, roaming
the audience, speaks into a microphone. Because the playwright was Jewish, there's
some nonsense about Tel Aviv projected on a screen over the stage, nothing to
do with the play. A couple in the audience pose for a photo with the characters,
and an actor hands us a pie. But none of this can help this plodding, heavy-handed
production, in which characters yell to make a point.
To make matters worse, the set and costume designs make us want to close our
eyes. Tightly.
The problem is that no one loves the characters - not the playwright, not the
director, and worst of all, not the actors.
- Steve Capra
10-07
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