A scene from Festen, photo credit: Stefan Okołowicz, www.trwarszawa.pl
Grzegorz Jarzyna and TR Warszawa take their Festen for an American premiere showing at Brooklyn’s St. Ann's Warehouse. The play is based on the award-winning Danish film The Celebration, made in accordance with the Dogme 95 manifesto’s principles
The story, adapted by screenwriter Thomas Vinterberg, its structure, and much of the language remain true to the film: a family gathers to celebrate the 60th birthday of the family patriarch. In Jarzyna's production, however, "two long tables laid out at right angles, brings to mind not just Chekhov but a whole range of Shakespeare plays: Hamlet obviously, with its theme of buried family secrets, but even more specifically, Macbeth, with the sense of a ceremonial banquet thrown into disarray through the intrusion of ghosts from the past" (The Guardian). The play's first 2001 Warsaw performance turned into one of the most important events of the season and it's New York run is looking bright after a vibrant review from The New York Times head theatre critic Ben Brantley on the 24th of April, in which he calls the performance "dysfunctional-family drama as big-canvas Grand Guignol".
Susan Feldman, the Artistic Director of St. Ann's Warehouse, the venue hosting the show, has expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the performance and avers,
I must confess to being obsessed. I first heard about Grzegorz Jarzyna’s Festen in 2004, when it was the hit of the Dublin International Theatre Festival. In the ensuing years, Festen, based on the beloved Danish Dogme95 film by Thomas Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov, has been the focus of many theatrical adaptations, including West End and Broadway productions. It has particularly captured the imagination of Eastern European directors, and I so wanted TR Warszawa’s production to come to St. Ann’s Warehouse. And, now, after 8 years, with the help and support of the Polish government, it will be a reality!
Susan Feldman describes the play as a banquet-setting for ghosts of the past, which make themselves known and reveal secrets at a family gathering. Amidst the feast’s finery, massive amounts of food and drink are consumed by the cast of 25 - including 20 boiled eggs, 3 roast chickens, 5 melons and 3 pineapples. According to Feldman, the enduring popularity and success of Festen as both film and theater lies in its struggle to differentiate family folklore from reality, to free truth from denial, so that those who survive may also live.
In an interview for the Wall Street Journal, Feldman explains that the production is also the last show to take place at her theatre's venue, following which the company is scheduled to move to a different space:
It's the last big show, in terms of a big international company of 31 people. It'll be [TR Warszawa artistic director Grzegorz Jarzyna's] third show with us. (...) This is the first of his shows that's actually being designed to fit into our space.
Renate Klett wrote in her review for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung after seeing a performance on the show during its previous European run,
Jarzyna turns out to be a master of suspense, the heir of Hitchcock. He composes his performances using movie methods - in the way he builds up and stresses tension and intensity, brings scenes into crescendo and then makes them crash just before climax, how he contrasts mass scenes with portraits. The Celebration becomes a thriller on stage.
Born in 1968, Grzegorz Jarzyna is a theatre and opera director, and head and artistic director of TR Warszawa since 1998. Jarzyna studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, and also attended the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków. In 1993, he began his studies in the Drama Department at the Ludwik Solski State Drama School in Kraków. He studied under Krystian Lupa, and was his assistant during the production of Hermann Broch's Lunatycy. Esch, czyli anarchia / Lunatics - Esch, or Anarchy at the Stary Teatr (Old Theatre) in Krakow (1995). The performance was also Jarzyna's diploma piece. Jarzyna is one of the most accalimed Polish theatre directors of the young generation.
TR Warszawa
Festen (The Celebration)
Adapted for the stage by Thomas Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov. Directed by Grzegorz JarzynaCast: Magdalena Cielecka, Ewa Dalkowska, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Magdalena Kuta, Aleksandra Popławska, Danuta Stenka/Katarzyna Herman, Danuta Szaflarska, Mariusz Benoit, Andrzej Chyra, Jan Dravnel, Carlos Ferreira, Wojciech Kalarus, Marek Kalita, Marek Kępiński, Redbad Klijnstra, Cezary Kosiński, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Jan Peszek, Stanisław Sparazynski. Production features lighting by Jacqueline Sobiszewski, set design by Małgorzata Szczęśniak, music by Paweł Mykietyn and Piotr Dominski, costumes by Magdalena Maciejewska, and subtitles by Agnieszka Tuszyńska and Justyna Konczewska.
Festen in New York is presented by St. Anne’s in cooperation with the Polish Cultural Institute New York and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw. Additional support comes from the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington. Performances are scheduled between Friday, the 20th of April and Sunday, 29th of April, 2012. All shows begin at 8:00 pm, except the 22nd of April (4:00 pm) and 29th of April (2:00 pm). Approx. running time: 2 hours 15 min. (with 1 intermission).
In May TR Warszawa opens the Edinburgh International Festival in August with Macbeth.
St. Ann's Warehouse
38 Water Street, Brooklyn, NY
Tickets:
$35.00-70.00
available online
or by phone at the box office: 718.254.8779
Editor: SRS
Source: press release, polishculture-nyc.org