"This performance is also a film," notes the director. "In this combination of the forms of theatre and film, the camera allows us to delve deeper into the world of Yvonne, the world of her silence and the world of the other characters. This is Ivona... as a movie," explains Garbaczewski. In terms of stage design, the filmic aspect is also the most attractive. The stage design, created by director himself, is subordinated to the principles of the film setting. The scenography is dynamic, and together with the characters, undergoes some kind of degradation. Over the course of that degradation, we are given access to the live action that was previously shown on video alone. The music and script were written by Marcin Cecko, Garbaczewski’s longtime collaborator.
"Garbaczewski’s Ivona is an absurd, exquisitely executed joke; it is sassy yet self-deprecating," commented Joanna Wichowska in dwutygodnik.com:
Garbaczewski opens his performance by exposing his actors on the empty, raw proscenium – in the blurred, unpleasant, unscenic fluorescent lights mounted on the floor, just before the first rows where the audience sits, just to hide them right after behind screens of paper to which we have access only via cameras. The history of the murder of the Duke’s wife-to-be turns out to be an ultimate psychological thriller in the style of Alfred Hitchcock. The cameras ceaselessly penetrate the paper maze which imitates the palace's corridors and interiors; they hunt protagonists, discover other alleys, armchairs, sofas and secrets. The extreme, infinitely long focusing on fragments of the face, a fingertip examining a knife’s blade, a ball of wool rolling on the floor, a hand holding the hair, and the accompanying Hitchcockian musical motifs, simulate a kind of bloody mystery. Colours are blinking; the camera quivers ominously, a finger points at the eye.
Łukasz Drewniak summed up in Przekrój:
Gorbaczewski’s Ivona..., staged in Opole, has overthrown the presumption that he is a hermetic artist. His version of the drama is actually a film being shot and edited on the stage before our eyes. The actors play behind the paper screens and we watch them almost exclusively on the screen alone. The performance has its wit and lightness. At the same time, it is a kind of game with film conventions and a significant reinterpretation of Ivona. To quote Gombrowicz – I fell to my knees. I will not forget the giant Doberman suspended above the stage, and dripping water from the mouth in 12 Angry Men (designed by Anna Maria Kaczmarska). And I will remember the performance of the brutal trio - Miranda, Caliban and Ferdinand (Nieradkiewicz, Czachor, Stramowski) in The Tempest.
Awards:
2012
- Award for best stage design (Krzysztof Garbaczewski),
- Award for best visual effects (Wojciech Puś) at 5th "Divine Comedy" International Festival in Kraków
2013
- Grand Prix at "Polish Classics" Opole Theatre Confrontations
- Award for the best stage design and direction - Krzysztof Garbaczewski
- Award for music and script - Marcin Cecko
- Award for best actress - Grażyna Misiorowska
- Award for the best actor - Paweł Smagała
source: J. Kochanowski Theatre in Opole, dwutygodnik.com, Przekrój, ed. AL, transl. GS, 13.10.2014