A Doll's House, dir. Herbert Fritsch, photo by Thomas Aurin
The Divine Comedy International Theatre Festival is about to make itself comfortable in Krakow for the fourth time, with a foretaste of the festival coming this Sunday, the fourth of December. The Łaźnia Nowa Theatre will stage Ibsen's "A Doll's House", as performed by the Oberhausen Theatre.
Directed by Herbert Fritsch, the Oberhausen production proved a great success on the German stage and was one of the ten best shows of the season invited in May to the Berlin Theatertreffen Festival.
The cosy yet thoroughly bourgeois home of the Helmers sees fervent Christmas preparations. Young, sweetly twittering Nora is bustling about the living room, at the same time doing Christmas shopping, decorating a Christmas tree, seeing to gifts for the children, advising her friend and trying to prevent an imminent crisis all at the same time. It turns out that her husband Torvald, exercising full control over his wife, underestimates Nora's delicate femininity, who, behind a mask of lies, unwaveringly seeks to cover up a social scandal and the brutal blackmail she is exposed to. By the time the New Year dawns, the Helmers' apparent happiness will collapse like a house of cards, leaving the theatre stage covered in the ruins of the relationship of people who have so far loved each other - a poignant commentary that reveals the hypocrisy of the 19th century institution of marriage.
Fritsch does not hew too closely to Ibsen's text, proposing instead a dark tale based on the themes explored by Ibsen. The bright Christmas decorations don't build an atmosphere of home idyll or the warmth of a family Christmas. instead, they evoke horrors and thrillers, effectively accentuated by the characters successively turning up on stage like pieces in a fairy-tale procession, rather than autonomous individuals. Even the more so as the unnatural and grotesque make-up makes them resemble gigantic puppets moving to the rhythm of music redolent of Hitchcock films, suggesting the presence of an invisible puppet manipulator behind the gloomy scenes.
Listening to German critique of Fritsch's production, we constantly come across opinions about the director's not being afraid of strong solutions that test the border with physical theatre, particularly in his use of violence, including sexual violence... On the other hand, he also uses extremely kitsch images that reference 20th century pop culture. Neither does he avoid touching upon the theme of women's and men's roles in society, or the presence of feminine and masculine bodies unambiguously identified with sex, in society, which the director seems to consider a theme of paramount importance in Ibsen's text. Ever more so, as Fritsch seems to comment on the fact that it is not only men that use their superior, stronger sex to dominate helpless women - in the Helmers' world, it is Nora that turns out to be dominating, making good use of her body. In this way, she perfectly contributes to the horror aesthetics that drives both material and erotic desires, lying dormant behind the veil of her respectable, bourgeois family.
The only thing we can be sure about is that the interpretation from the Oberhausen Theatre will open the audience to a new theatrical world of darkness and temptations that lead to Hell, suggesting the reflections and yearning for happiness of a Purgatory, and a refinement and sweet as Heaven. This is, in fact, what the best theatre should strive for.
A Doll's House
director: Herbert Fritsch
the 4th of December (Sunday), Łaźnia Nowa Theatre, 7 pm
The event forms a part of The Divine Comedy International Theatre Festival:
Programme
Organiser: Krakow Festival Office
This event is part of Attention Culture! Cultural Programme of the 2011 Polish EU Presidency, which comprises a six-month series of exceptional events and artistic projects, held as a part of the Polish presidency in the EU council.