Divadlo in Dialogue with Itself

Matti Linnavuori*

32nd edition of Divadlo (Theatre) festival in Pilsen, Czech Republic, 11 to 19 September 2024.

The selection at Pilsen’s Divadlo festival has in recent years become quite thrilling. Instead of isolated masterpieces—when available—the program now presents pairs of productions, which complement each other’s argument. Either that, or my perception has become more refined, and if so, I owe it to my constant exposure to Divadlo’s offerings.

Themes for the 2024 edition were French thinkers, family discrepancies, Euripides, abuse of the weak, motherhood, Thomas Bernhard, the end of the world. What was perhaps less visible than in previous years is Czech folklore.

Actors gather for the first read-through of Euripides’ Hecuba in the Comédie-Française production of Hecuba, Not Hecuba. Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

Thus the opening show Hecuba, Not Hecuba by the Comédie-Française showed the consequences of abuse of autistic children in a state-run institution, and the closing show from Poland, How I Didn’t Kill My Father and How Much I Regret It discussed the need for euthanasia for those in severe pain and beyond medical help.

Young Hilde (Mária Szaplonzay) arrives to demand that Solness (Pál Mácsai) build her a castle in Örkeny Theatre’s Solness. Photo: Judit Horvath

Thus the Hungarian playwright Kata Weber’s Pieces of a Woman by the Czech company from the town of Ostrava demonstrated how secrets revealed too late will ruin not only family relationships but also family finances. Thus Henrik Ibsen’s Solness from Budapest’s Örkény Theatre reinterpreted the 1892 classic from a #metoo perspective, but also threw some characters overboard never to be heard of again, just as ruthlessly as its main man Solness. For more on the impressive composure of Solness actors see here.

Dialogue with Bernhard

And then there was the overwhelming Dog on the Road, based on Pavel Vilikovsky’s novel from 2010, dramatized and directed by Dušan D. Pařizek!

Iks Ypsilon (Robert Roth) creates his Slovak mindscape with an overhead projector in Dog on the Road. Photo: Robert Tappert

The Slovak writer Vilikovsky (1941–2020) makes serious fun of the complexes of a small nation. Being Finnish, I fully relate to Slovaks introducing themselves with words borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous: “My name is XY (Iks Ypsilon) and I am a Slovak.” I identify with the ever-present national shame so hilariously and touchingly portrayed by the four male actors of the Slovak National Theatre, even though I cannot remember them using any other means of expression than roaring at full blast for two hours.

XY understands his scribblings will never equal those of his idol, Thomas Bernhard from neighboring Austria. To punish himself for this fatal flaw, where else would he travel than to Austria, expecting—and hoping—to be humiliated. Instead, this anecdotal travelogue arranges for him to meet an Austrian woman, played by the bearded, bald actor Luboš Kostelný.

Their Austrian adventure seems to adorn the four Slovaks in Dog on the Road (L–R Alexander Bárta, Robert Roth, Luboš Kostelný, Richard Stanke). Photo: Robert Tappert

Director Pařizek also designed the set, which consists of three overhead projectors at the sides. Their clumsy and simple projections on the paper curtains at the back serve to highlight the poorness of poor theatre in “Slovak” style.

Dialogue with Past Productions

The Divadlo program also discusses productions seen in recent years. French thinkers seem to be a recurring theme. In 2023, it was Didier Eribon, now Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy’s joint book of letters Public Enemies (2008 for the French original).

The opening scene of Public Enemies: Bernard-Henri Lévy (Václav Vašák, right) watches Michel Houellebecq (Miloslav König) come out of their tent. Photo: KIVA

Prague’s Theatre on the Balustrade usually provides most memorable, aesthetically dazzling-disturbing theatrical experiences, particularly when directed by Jan Mikulášek and dramatized by Dora Štědroňová. Public Enemies begins so gorgeously that it just cannot top the opening scene. In Dragan Stojčevski’s set, there is a tent in the woods, Levy (Václav Vašák) stands in front of it, and Houellebecq’s (Miloslav König) hand juts out of the tent, knocking ash off his cigarette. Then, Houellebecq gets to his feet, knocks on the wall of the forest. A door opens, and the forest hands him an ashtray.

French thinkers visit Moscow. Public Enemies has a neat way of demonstrating just how profound their understanding of Russia really is. Miloslav König (left) and Václav Vašák). Photo: KIVA

The Frenchmen proclaim views on important matters in surprising tones. They say they wish to be loved not in spite of their faults but because of them. Here I find the actors too skillful and charming to believe in their inner ugliness.

Euripides’ Trojan Women was seen in Pilsen in 2023 (https://www.critical-stages.org/28/resurrection-of-vaclav-havels-theatre-and-erotic-dreams-in-pilsen/). Now we have a version of his Hecuba. The Portuguese director of the Avignon Festival, Tiago Rodrigues, wrote and directed Hecuba, Not Hecuba for the Comédie-Française. The Pilsen show was its indoor premiere after several open air performances.

The actress (Elsa Lepoivre) pulls herself together during the prosecutor’s (Denis Podalydès) questioning in Hecuba, Not Hecuba. Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

A theatre company has come together for the first read-through of Euripides’ Hecuba. Elsa Lepoivre prepares for the role of Hecuba. At the same time, she prepares to be heard by a public prosecutor about abuse in an institution where her autistic son Otis has been sectioned. The two storylines gradually merge, and so do characters: Hecuba’s lines burst forth in the prosecutor’s hearings, and the actress’ parental concerns overtake moments designated for theatre rehearsals. The Agamemnon of the play (Denis Podalydès) shifts into the prosecutor and back again.

We get to know Otis only from his mother’s words. Otis likes—besides Otis Redding’s music—a reality television show, which follows a stray dog in search of we-don’t-know-what (the ever-elusive justice, it turns out).

Late into the show, the actors pull away a cloth, which has covered the dominant piece of Fernando Ribeiro’s set; it turns out to be a huge statue of a dog, three-legged just like the dog on television. Only now do I understand that Hecuba’s slaughtered son has been on the stage all this time, as a paw severed from the dog’s body. The superbly orchestrated production distrusts my capacity for understanding and gives the main actress a final speech where she explains the connection between Otis and the dog. Is there an added benefit in admiring how skillful the actress is? Certainly the subtext gets hammered home.

The statue of the dog revealed in Hecuba, Not Hecuba. Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

The mother is compelled to repeat her story of Otis’ abuse numerous times at the prosecutor’s, which evokes the type and amount of repetition in theatre rehearsals; very clever and enjoyable.

The festival’s closing show, How I Didn’t Kill My Father and How Much I Regret It is a joint effort from Polish theatres from Cracow and Kielce. Mateuz Pakuła directed his own adaptation of his book of prose (2021). It is a diary about the artist watching his father die slowly and painfully from an incurable illness.

Justyna Elminowska’s set for How I Didn’t Kill My Father and How Much I Regret It evokes an aquapark; the dying man, an architect, planned them. To me, the set suggests a sewer, because the harbingers of bad tidings appear from there. Photo: Klaudyna Schubert

There is plenty of text, more than enough to keep my eyes on the surtitles rather than the somewhat static activity on stage. Such grave subject matter presses for an emotionally charged reaction, which I cannot provide. I found the main character far more interested in his own emotional jerks than in concrete deeds to alleviate his father’s plight. I dare moralize this much because I have been in a similar situation.

Dialogues with the North and the East

Kata Weber’s Pieces of a Woman premiered in Warsaw, Poland, in 2018 and is known as an American feature film from 2020. Both versions were directed by Kornél Mundruczó. Their works are frequent guests at Divadlo, too.

Lars (Marián Chalány, right) tries to finance his drug addiction by hitting on a family friend, the lawyer Zuzana (Markéta Haroková) in Pieces of a Woman. Photo: Martin Špelda

In 2024, we were shown Jan Holec’s production from Ostrava’s Petr Bezruč Theatre. It begins with a forty-minute film, where Maja (Alexandra Palatínusová) gives birth at home, while her husband Lars (Marián Chalány) keeps dashing about. After the intermission, it is live theatre at Maja’s mother’s, where family members struggle not to insult each other but inevitably end up doing so.

In the American film, Lars’ name is Sean, but in the play he is Norwegian. By a crude association, his name reminds me of the Swedish playwright Lars Norén, not least because Weber’s text bears a kinship to Norén’s early 1980s family dramas. With Weber, the opportunity to vent one’s frustration is more evenly distributed among the characters than with the somewhat egocentric Norén. And the main characters now are educated women, not an anguished youth. Curiously though, the four women are kept busy performing all the housework, while the two men sit, gossip and drink—not really how I picture a Scandinavian division of chores.

Kristýna Franková (left) as Věra Čáslavská. At the other end of the television sets, her Soviet rival (Martina J. Hartmannová). Photo: Filip Nekola

Pilsen’s own Alfa Theatre showed an hour-long puppet performance Čáslavská–Tokyo–1964. A cast of Czech and Japanese actor-puppeteers tell the story of the Czechoslovak gymnast Věra Čáslavská at the Tokyo Olympic games, where she won the gold medal against fierce competition from her Soviet rival.

The author Tomáš Jarkovský and the director Jakub Vašíček have worked as an artistic team ever since their student years. Their show is technically versatile. At the sides of the stage sit two television commentators, one Czech, the other Japanese. They translate each other’s speeches, which slows down the show, but then again gives emphasis to the mystical moment when Čáslavská meets an old man on a mountain and understands his instructions—in Japanese—for winning through joy.

Puppeteers (L–R Haruhi Shoji, Mamika Kawajiry, Martina J. Hartmannová) prepare the wise old man to give Věra Čáslavská valuable advice. Photo: Filip Nekola

Kamil Bělohválek’s set is a row of tiny television sets, which have curtains; it is endearing to follow the gymnast’s moves through the row of sets. This innocence recreates the era when television’s grip on the Olympics began. In the gymnast’s winning program, movement is created by actors’ handheld lights twirling on the body of a still puppet, and this looks truly acrobatic.

The show concentrates on Tokyo. Later in life, Čáslavská (1942–2016) repeated her gold medal feat in the 1968 Mexico Olympics. At this time, she expressed her support for the Prague Spring and fell into disfavor. During Václav Havel’s presidency 1993–2003, she became an advisor to the president and travelled with him to Japan on a state visit. 


*Matti Linnavuori wrote theatre criticism between 1978 and 2013 for various newspapers and weeklies in his native Finland. In 1985, he worked for the BBC World Service in London. Since 1998, he has presented papers at numerous IATC events. In the 2000s, he wrote for Teatra Vestnesis in Latvia. Since 1993, he has written and directed several radio plays for YLE the Finnish Broadcasting Company. His latest stage play, Ta mig till er ledare (Take Me to Your Leader, 2016), ran at Lilla Teatern in Helsinki.

Copyright © 2024 Matti Linnavuori
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #30, Dec. 2024
e-ISSN: 2409-7411

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