Tadeusz Różewicz’s 10 Most Important Plays
For many years, Tadeusz Różewicz’s plays appealed to people’s imaginations with their scalpel-sharp, subversively intelligent, metaphorical language. But after communist censorship ended and reading between the lines lost its former power of attraction, Różewicz disappeared imperceptibly from the stage.
Should Tadeusz Różewicz’s plays have stopped being performed? They were far ahead of their time. Although many years have passed since they were written, it’s disturbing how accurately their catastrophic visions reflect everyday life in the present time.
'The Card Index'
The Card Index was written by Tadeusz Różewicz in the years 1958-1959 and was his first play to be performed. It was a pioneering work that radically expanded the canon of theatrical possibilities, not only in Poland. Zbigniew Majchrowski mentioned in his introduction to the book Kartoteka: Kartoteka Rozrzucona (The Card Index: The Scattered Card Index), published in Kraków in 1997, that Różewicz’s canonical text appeared on the stage before man ascended into space. Before the Second Vatican Council and the construction of the Berlin Wall. Before the Beatles began making music or the release of Aleksander Ford’s film Knights of the Teutonic Order.
A censored version of the play was published in the monthly magazine Dialog. A book edition, together with a collection of poems titled Zielona Róża (The Green Rose), was published by the Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy in 1961. The full version was published eleven years later in the volume Sztuki Teatralne (Plays).
The Card Index is composed of two main images: the protagonist’s inner emptiness and a deluge of phenomena, people and things that are attacking him, flowing continuously through the room where he is. The past and present, with references to the years of the Nazi German occupation, merge seamlessly, creating a striking picture of the complexes of a Polish intellectual who is unable to cope with the challenges of reality.
Text
‘The strength of the play,’ Jan Błoński wrote about The Card Index, ‘is the derisive modesty with which the main character refers to himself, and with which Różewicz refers to the main character. The gibberish which occasionally bogs down the action contains a method and an aim – namely, the rejection of tragedy. Only mockery can save the sobriety of our minds and thus – in the final analysis – our own freedom… The author invokes the vague and undefeated hope that he has preserved in the depths of his heart’.
The premiere of The Card Index took place on 25th March 1960 at the Dramatyczny Theatre in Warsaw. It was directed by Wanda Laskowska, the set was designed by Jerzy Kosiński, and Józef Para played the main role. It was directed by Konrad Swinarski for TV Theatre in 1967, with Tadeusz Łomnicki in the main role, and by Krzysztof Kieślowski in 1979, starring Gustaw Holoubek.
The world premiere took place on 13th January 1961 at the Unicorn Theatre in New York (translated by Barbara Vedder and directed by Alexander Wilson, with Peter Boyle playing the main character). More translations and foreign premieres followed later that year: in West Germany (The City Theatre in Essen) and in Sweden (The University Theatre in Stockholm). The Card Index has been constantly performed on many stages throughout the world, even up until the present day.
Kazimierz Kutz staged it at the National Theatre in Warsaw (premiere: 29th May 1999), with Zbigniew Zamachowski in the lead role, who very aptly, with words written decades ago, expressed anxieties so familiar to us today. An anarchic reading of The Card Index that was, however, faithful to the author’s main idea, starring Jan Peszek, was staged by Michał Zadara in the Contemporary Theatre in Wrocław in December 2006.
The Funny Old Man
The Funny Old Man, a ‘comedy in two scenes’, was written in 1963. A lonely pensioner is accused of an unspecified and unproven crime. In response to the accusation – subdued, sad and terrified – he tells the court the heart-breaking story of his wasted life.
It was first staged by Zdzisław Tobiasz and Janusz Warmiński at the Ateneum Theatre on 21st December 1965, and was performed for many years in theatres throughout Poland. There was a sophisticated adaptation of The Funny Old Man for TV Theatre in 1997, directed by the author’s brother, Stanisław Różewicz, with Wojciech Pszoniak as the lead.
My Little Daughter
My Little Daughter began as a radio play or (according to the description of it in the archive of Polish National Radio), ‘prose read’ by Władysław Krasnowiecki in the series ‘Encounters with Actors’, recorded on 23rd December 1966. After its staging by Jerzy Jarocki at the Old Theatre in Kraków (May 1968), with Jerzy Kaliszewski in the role of Henryk, the text began to lead an independent life on stage.
In 2000, TV Theatre staged My Little Daughter. The success of the production was due to the enduring relevance of Różewicz’s text, Andrzej Barański’s lucid adaptation and direction, and the outstanding performance of the actors, particularly Jerzy Trela and Zbigniew Zapasiewicz. Widowed Henryk (Trela) sends his beloved daughter Mireczka (Agata Buzek) to study in Warsaw. The girl gets involved with the deceptively handsome pseudo-literary Harry (Rafał Królikowski). An abortion, abandoned studies, a suicide attempt, treatment. And her ‘care’ in the hands of a certain Żorż (Piotr Fronczewski), who knows how to make sure that his ward works off the expenses she incurs.
Henry, a small-town fellow who shows up with a suitcase full of homemade Christmas treats, endures a horrid ordeal of humiliation. He refuses to come even one step closer to his beloved child who has been so severely humiliated and devoured by the hostile world. The protagonist’s intimate confession is the most moving avowal a man can make – of a massive parental failure. Henryk identifies his own fears with the character of the Filthy Man (Zapasiewicz), an extremely scruffy apple seller. This man once offered little Mirusia his most beautiful apple but, despite the child’s tears, her father returned it to him. Unexpectedly, the paths of these two people meet again. Barański’s production is a masterpiece. It’s one of the clearest diagnoses of our contemporary times that TV Theatre has ever made.
In 2009, My Little Daughter was staged by Marek Fiedor at the Ateneum Theatre in Warsaw, starring Artur Barcis (Henryk) and Jerzy Kamas (The Filthy Man).
The Old Woman Broods
The success of Różewicz’s innovative debut, The Card Index, led to all of his subsequent plays being perceived as weaker. This is why his play The Old Woman Broods, written in 1968, didn’t have an easy start. It didn’t make it to the stage of the Old Theatre in Kraków despite the efforts of Jerzy Jarocki, who finally staged it at the Contemporary Theatre in Wrocław (June 1969). Its reception was not very enthusiastic, although the acrobatic skills of Maja Komorowska (acquired in Jerzy Grotowski’s troupe), as she flew above the stage on a swinging chandelier, did leave a lasting impression on the audience.
The Old Woman Broods is a play in which nothing seems impossible. In fact, anything can happen in it. The randomness of events in it and lack of continuity require the skills of a very responsible staging director capable of deriving his own, highly evocative story from this non-linear narrative.
This is precisely what director Stanisław Różewicz did in his staging at the National Theatre in Warsaw (March 2007) – he modified the play by adding some material from his brother’s later works.
The world is constantly heading towards self-destruction, wars are being waged, the environment is being degraded, and it’s becoming difficult to find even a tiny scrap of clean space. The protagonist’s field of action is increasingly limited, as the café where she sits is gradually filled by growing piles of rubbish. In the second scene, the audience sees ‘a rubbish heap “like the sea”, from shore to shore. A rubbish heap all the way to the horizon’. However, the Old Woman, in a toned-down interpretation by Anna Chodakowska, steadfastly persists in spite of everything.
'On All Fours'
On All Fours, written in the years 1965-1971, was first directed by Jerzy Jarocki at the Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw (March 1972). On All Fours tells the story of an old and childish writer named Laurenty, who – following a motif taken from the biography of the brilliant French painter Maurice Utrill – most enjoys… playing with an electric train. However, he’s often disturbed by the overprotective housekeeper, Pelasia, who’s constantly serving him soup, and by the crowds of intruders who want to bask in the glow of his fame. A girl who appears in the esteemed writer’s office in order, allegedly, to write a dissertation, spares no effort to seduce the master and become his wife.
The production, with an excellent performance by Ignacy Gogolewski as Laurenty, was directed by Kazimierz Kutz at the National Theatre in Warsaw (January 2001). The text, which is not easy to comprehend and constantly oscillates between a serio and buffo tone, was dazzling under Kutz’s direction, primarily thanks to Gogolewski’s acting. He played the main character who is simultaneously a brilliant artist and an ordinary man, in whom true greatness goes hand in hand with human imperfection and physical shortcomings. The production was complemented by atmospheric music composed by Jan Kanty-Pawluśkiewicz and an elegant set design by Jerzy Kalina, which was particularly stunning in the final scene of Laurenty’s apotheosis.
'The White Marriage'
The White Marriage is a play written in 1973 by Tadeusz Różewicz that boldly broke moral taboos and earned him a reputation for scandal. It provoked, for example, the indignation of Artur Sandauer, who principally criticised The White Marriage for what he considered to be excessive debauchery.
The first to stage this play was director Tadeusz Minc, who prepared a playful production of it at the National Theatre in Warsaw: colourful, frivolous and hilarious (premiere: 24 January 1975). It was also probably the first topless performance on a professional stage in Poland (Barbara Sułkowska in the role of Paulina), a still timid echo of the moral revolution in the West (for example, nudity in the musicals Hair and Oh! Calcutta!).
Shortly thereafter, at the Contemporary Theatre in Wrocław, director Kazimierz Braun adopted a serious Freudian tone in The White Marriage, in a brilliant production inspired by the style of the Art Nouveau era (premiere: 11 September 1975). It was also the brilliant debut of Zofia de Ines-Lewczuk, who designed stunning costumes in tones of black, grey and white that made reference to Aubrey Beardsley prints and expressionist films.
The version staged by Grzegorz Wiśniewski at the Common Theatre in Warsaw (April 2003) was a melancholy reminder of times when nudity on stage evoked flushes of emotion. In the idyllic atmosphere of a small manor house, two teenage girls (Anna Moskal and Paulina Holtz) experience the challenges of growing up. This is in no small part due to the real or imagined behaviour of the other characters: the languorous and embittered Mother (Ewa Dalkowska), the widowed Aunt (Joanna Żółkowska), the hot-headed Father (Cezary Żak), the flirtatious Grandfather (Stanisław Brudny), and the playful Cook (Maria Robaszkiewicz). The action gains momentum when the melancholic, poetic character of Beniamin (Adam Woronowicz), a young candidate for the hand of one of the girls, appears on the horizon.
This was Tadeusz Różewicz’s only play to be adapted as a film. It was directed by Magdalena Łazarkiewicz, with Jolanta Fraszyńska (Bianka) and Agata Piotrowska (Paulina) in the main roles. The film was released in 1992.
Into the Sand
Różewicz took an even greater beating for his play Into the Sand, in which he depicted partisan life. He knew about it from his own first-hand experience as a partisan soldier and presented it without any patriotic fervour, and without hiding the sinister, usually hushed-up aspects. The text took Różewicz 17 years to write (1955-1972), and couldn’t find a publisher for another seven years.
The first staging of Into the Sand, directed by Tadeusz Łomnicki at the Wola District Theatre in Warsaw (March 1979), was soon cancelled due to protests by World War II veterans. Kazimierz Kutz’s TV version of the play waited many months to be broadcast (September 1990), and then ultimately sparked further protests. Różewicz’s play triggers strong emotions because it demythologises the Polish resistance movement during World War II. The author presents it with a naturalistic brutality. The soldiers of the unit hiding in the forest are dirty, smelly, and vulgar. There are some extremely corrupt individuals among them. After robbing a vicarage and raping the housekeeper, two of the culprits disappear, leaving the simple-minded Waluś, who has been accompanying them, to his fate. Although the death sentence given to Waluś seems to be an absurd misunderstanding, the laws of war are clear in such cases. Kutz created a wonderful production pulsating with emotion. Among the excellent roles, special attention should be paid to the sincere and naive character of Waluś, performed by Piotr Cyrwus, who was relatively unknown at that time. The actor imbued this character with a shockingly powerful truth of expression. It’s a masterpiece of TV theatre which no protests can undermine.
The third production of Into the Sand, staged by the Provisorium Theatre and Kompania Theatre in Lublin (December 2003), doesn’t challenge the partisan myth, nor does it trigger any debate about the Polish Home Army or the National Armed Forces. The directors, Janusz Opryński and Witold Mazurkiewicz, didn’t want to stage a performance about a futile sacrifice in the name of military law. Rather, they posed questions about what it was acceptable to die for and the meaning of wartime debasement. Their staging of Into the Sand is about people’s responsibility for other human beings – for their pain, suffering and death. It’s a performance about the absurdity of war and the dehumanisation it causes. They created an anti-epic about anti-heroes, juxtaposing it with Rainer Maria Rilke’s true epic in the style of a medieval ballad – The Song of the Life and Death of the Cornet, Christopher Rilke. The romantic death of a solitary hero is juxtaposed with the wretched existence of partisans who are lost in time and space.
The Hunger Artist Departs
Różewicz’s drama The Hunger Artist Departs was written in 1976, inspired by the short story ‘A Hunger Artist’ (originally: Der Hungerkünstler) by Franz Kafka. It was directed by Helmut Kajzar at the Contemporary Theatre in Wrocław (February 1977) with Bogusław Kierc in the lead role.
Convinced of the play’s insightfulness and topicality, Piotr Kruszczyński staged a new version at the same theatre in 2002. The audience witnesses the production of a TV show whose protagonist is a character called the Hunger Artist, in the final stages of a 40-day fast. Locked inside a glass box that resembles a widescreen TV, he witnesses the struggles of over-eaters and is forced to decide which is better: pierogi with onions or pork knuckle. But the radicality of the Hunger Artist’s stance – a media star posing as a victim of the media – is, above all, a product of the determination with which his manager strives for the show’s success.
'The Trap'
Long fascinated by the work and figure of Franz Kafka, Tadeusz Różewicz completed his play The Trap in 1979. Published in 1982, it premiered one year later in Bergen, Norway. In Poland, Kazimierz Braun staged the play at the Contemporary Theatre in Wrocław (January 1984), with Bogusław Kierc in the role of Franz.
Stanisław Różewicz directed his brother’s play for TV Theatre (premiere: 10 December 1990). The main character, Franz (Olgierd Łukaszewicz), is as much a victim of his father’s (Gustaw Lutkiewicz) harshness while he, himself, is causing pain to those closest to him through his maladjustment – his mother (Ewa Żukowska), his fiancée Felicja (Gabriela Kownacka), her friends Greta (Marzena Trybała) and Jana (Krystyna Wachelko-Zaleska), and his friend Maks (Jarosław Gajewski). He’s terrified by the prospect of a serious relationship, the nature of which he unexpectedly discovers in a furniture shop (‘If the foundation of our relationship is going to be a chair or a wardrobe, I don’t see… I must… I think I might have a fever… I must leave… I have no attachment to furniture… I don’t want to become a prisoner, a slave, I can’t carry a wardrobe… is this perhaps my cross? The wardrobe?’).
Włodzimierz Press played this role (as a special guest) in a version created by Jerzy Jarocki at the Polish Theatre in Wrocław (May 1992). The fundamental problem posed by Różewicz in The Trap concerns freedom and the limits of an artist’s ‘ego’, as well as how much it costs to protect one’s own sensitivity in the face of reality’s tough demands. Franz’s dream under an apple tree in Różewicz’s work and in Jarocki’s staging is one of Kafka’s prophetic visions, astonishing in its ingenuity. An innocent game of blind man’s bluff with his sisters turns into a projection of their fate.
Three young, innocent girls wearing light-coloured, navy-style uniforms run away from their blindfolded brother, who tries to catch them. The girls’ running becomes increasingly frantic and their outfits – less and less complete. Finally, we see the girls being chased by a group of women who are also nearly naked, who are in turn being chased by barking dogs. All three of Franz Kafka’s sisters died at Auschwitz.
Tadeusz Różewicz spent several decades collecting material for The Trap. But although the life of the great writer Franz Kafka was certainly not a simple one, Różewicz didn’t write a strictly biographical play.
Instead of a conventional plot, there appears an analysis of the peculiar double trap in which twentieth-century man was forced to exist. There is, as Różewicz suggests, firstly the ‘trap of History’, the sinister symbol of which are the Executioners, and then the ‘trap of Biology’, which the play’s main character describes by saying: ‘It is I who am the trap, my body is a trap into which I fell at birth’.
The Card Index Scattered
What would the protagonist of Różewicz’s first play, The Card Index, want to say to us if he were transported 33 years into the future? Różewicz returned once again to the bitterness of his generation, people still uncertain of their ideological choices. He ‘scattered’ the texts of his debut play and blended them with new ones, changing dialogues, characters and scenes.
During a series of open rehearsals that Różewicz held with the actors of the Polish Theatre in Wrocław in November and December 1992, he put into practice the idea of ‘writing on stage’. This is how his play The Card File Scattered came into being. It was later successfully adapted by Kazimierz Kutz for TV Theatre (November 1998).
The protagonist (Jerzy Trela and Krzysztof Globisz) is entangled in both the past and present of a political and mental transformation. There are some hot news topics here, such as the trade in human organs and drugs, or a dispute over which rabbi has the right to issue kosher certificates for vodka produced in Poland. There’s a narrative poem made up of newspaper adverts. And another, particularly ironic poem composed of fragments of contemporary parliamentary debates. And finally, there’s a pleiade of brilliantly performing actors from Kraków and Wrocław.
'Trelemorele'
Tadeusz Różewicz’s drama Trelemorele, published in 2005 in the monthly magazine Dialog, was adapted for TV by Piotr Łazarkiewicz on the occasion of Różewicz’s 85th birthday (October 2006). The content of the play is best reflected in the subtitle: ‘A soap opera script for public and private television’.
The author openly mocks the language of this medium which, in a false attempt to please the audience, tends towards nonsensical gibberish and intentional kitsch with a touch of perversion. A family sitting in front of a television set emotionlessly absorbs the pap of images pouring out of it: mind-numbing game shows, ridiculous commercials, idiotic series and unreliable news programmes. An anxious flip through the channels doesn’t change anything. It’s the same everywhere – equally bland and hopeless.
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