Directed by Rudolf Ziolo, Popular Theatre (Teatr Powszechny) in Warsaw, April 2002.
During rehearsals for BIESY / THE DEVILS in 1971, director Andrzej Wajda told his actors that they did not have the right to play Dostoyevsky on stage. These and other words resulted in one of the best productions in the history of Polish post-war theatre, and Wajda and company toured the show throughout almost all of Europe. The primary motif of the play is based on an interpretation of a quote from the Bible about galloping devils embodied in pigs. And it is in the tempo of a gallop that the action unfolds.
Rudolf Zioło also has the ambition of creating a production of THE DEVILS that would be in line with our times, a production that would analyze contemporary sensibilities and be about young people, stripped of fundamental values, lost in the world that surrounds them.
The action is multi-layered, however, at its forefront is the struggle of people who question the existence of God while they desperately need an idea by which to live their lives. They encounter a group of self-appointed saviors of humanity who have lost a sense of measure in their greedy destructiveness, who trample basic values and subscribe to the dangerous principle of ends that justify means, write the creators of the production.
The Powszechny Theatre production of THE DEVILS features Rafal Krolikowski in the role of Stavrogin, Edyta Olszowka as Marya Timofeyevna, Joanna Szczepkowska as Barbara Stavrogin, and Franciszek Pieczka as Tikhon.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, BIESY / THE DEVILS, adapted by Albert Camus, translated by Joanna Guze, directed by Rudolf Zioło, scenery designed by Andrzej Witkowski, music by Bolesław Rawski. Premiere: April 24, 2002 at the Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw.