Oblomov, directer: Alvis Hermanis, photo by Hermann & Clarchen Baus
Alvis Hermanis’s staging in its visual aspect harks back to stage naturalism: the critics underscore the set aesthetic close to "reconstruction, to the theatre of old Russia". However it’s not a museumlike reconstruction of a dead theatre, but a "time machine".
Hermanis, although he has a lot of fondness for his hero and the characters swirling around him, a fondness akin to sentiment, never forgets about his contemporary audience. Slow-paced and set in a sequence of painting-like picture scenes "Oblomov" seems to invite the audience for a journey inside a dream about its eponymous hero.
Ilya Ilyich Oblomov – inert, standing beside reality – is not a literal rewriting of the hero of Goncharov’s novel. Hermanis intensified the Russian prose, drawing from it an unusal energy of theatrical impact. In a way characteristic of him he blended the idealistic pinings of the languid landowner, the energetic actions of his friend Stoltz, with the (un)happy romantic theme, to weave from these strands a story half nostalgic, half funny, and beautiful with a beauty of a stage masterpiece. A beauty as ambiguous as it is perverse. For although the character of Oblomov raises our laughter and fills us with pity, and the lack of any formal modernization throws us off guard, still a question doesn’t leave us for a long time – the question oft repeated by Ilya, which Hermanis put as the subtitle of his play: "When, then, are we to live?" Can we be sure that the director’s intention was just to tell us a story about the old Russia?
11.10.2011 18:30
Laznia Nowa Theatre
The event is a part of Krakow's Theatrical Reminiscences:
Programme
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, including the European Culture Congress, held as a part of the Polish presidency in the EU council.