Branislav Nušić
IT HAD TO BE SO
Adapted and Directed by Egon Savin

Premiere: „Ljuba Tadić“ stage of Yugoslav Drama Theatre, 6 June 2007
Running time approx.: 1h 40’ and has no break

Cast:

Language Consultant

ABOUT SHOW
IT HAD TO BE SO
His comedies are too cheerful and congenial to expose today's society. It Had To Be So is a play about moral downfall and a crash of ideals. This is a story about the process of moral degradation in a practical world in which every touch with money is problematic, and love is made impossible. In the manner of fin de siecle in the Balkans, the play sharply portrays the aloofness of civil servants, their laziness and bon vivant leanings, their adulatory conduct, vulgarity of the rich, their primitiveness and crudeness. The bon vinant joviality, haughtiness  – these are Nusic's favourite objects of ridicule. In the play It Had To Be Say Nusic has exceptionally little sympathy for the amoral vitalism of his surroundings. Amorality here is portrayed  as a part of the bourgeois way of life. Using children and spouses to attain success and prestige is a common occurence in the Nusic-esque Belgrade. And all means are allowed when it comes to money. Frauds, treasons, plots, adultery are quotidian in bourgeois urban Belgrade, and not just Belgrade but entire capitalist Europe that is ferociously driven towards industralisation and destroying patriarchal models. The only thing on which we can build the new productions of Nusic's plays is depicting social relations of his time and ours. It is a great challenge for a contemporary production to show that Nusic the writer of drama and Nusic the writer of comedy are in fact the same person. A writer of voluptuous talent, a creature of theatre.

Egon Savin

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ABOUT AUTHOR

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ABOUT DIRECTOR
EGON SAVIN  Profesor of Directing at Faculty Of Drama Arts in Belgrade and Faculty Of Drama Arts in Cetinje. He has directed in almost all major theatres of former Yugoslavia, and his productions toured Nancy, Paris, Warszaw, Tel Aviv, Vienna, New York... He received a series of awards for his direction of works of local and international authors, several Steria awards and 'Bojan Stupica' Award.
He successfully worked with all produciton models in existance in these regions: from the production of Farewell Judas that assembled a group of conspirative young artists in mid-seventies who formed one of the possible models of theatrical off-scene, to productions at institutions of national significance – Belgrade National Theatre, Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica, Macedonian National Theatre.
He succesfully staged works of local and international classics in which he finds concrete clues that reveal the essential power of theatre in our times, linking both the plays and their authors to the concrete space and time in which the production is created, avoiding the realm of daily politics, political vulgarisation and the banal.
At Yugoslav Drama Theatre, he directed productions of Passion According To Živojin by Radoslav Pavlović, Summerfolk by Maksim Gorki, The Merchant Of Venice by William Shakespeare and Forest by A.N. Ostrovski.

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REVIEWS

A ‘STERIJAN’
When directing a local play, Egon Savin, director and professor of acting, always tries to look into what is profoundly local, in order to make it universal by means of theatre… It Had To Be So, in this latest Savin’s inscenation, is Ibsen Serbian-style.
Anita Mančić, as Jela, was a true heroine, suffering for her inconsiderateness, all her actions too late and ill-timed. As in every Aristotelian good play, she pays for this dearly. There was not a dry eye among the frivolous premiere audience during the scene of her weakness in which Djordje, her husband, lacks the strength to cope with either love or honour. Or even life itself. A nice emotion among the audience and an incredible event for this heartless city. Nebojša Dugalić, Djordje, a euphoric homemaker, plebeianly in love, generous in an upstart fashion, until his uncle (excellent Miša Janketić) reminds him of his roots and ‘tragic guilt of the forefathers’… His final scene… is worthy of the grand tragedy actors. Vojin Ćetković is very accurately cast for the part of Nestorović, Jela’s former fiancé, from whom she receives, asking him for the sum to cover Djordje’s debt, both the sum and her sin. Ćetković plays Nestorović as a man who is not glad to take what is being given to him, restrained, with bourgeois scruples. However, it is the fact of life that we often do not command events! The play’s ending with his farewell to Jela is a nice accent made by Savin, adding to the scales of emotions and earning these emotions.
Predrag Ejdus, as Jela’s father, was a well measured counterbalance to the gravity of events described.
Miodrag Radovanović was the sign of the times and the condition of Serbian spirit, a thing not positive, but nevertheless truthful.
Angelina Atlagić has, as usually, along with the director’s touching selection of local music, reconstructed the events on the stage to the point of their being both convincing and symbolic, which is a difficult task.
Dragana Bošković, Danas, June 8 2007

FOR ROMANTIC SOULS
In Nušić’ play, Savin recognised what he was looking for in Forest by A. Ostrovski: the power of money and powerlessness, frailty, drama of love. Fortunately, this conflict is neither a one-way, monochromatic, black and white game, nor pamphlet moralism.
Egon Savin and his cast: Anita Mančić, Predrag Ejdus, Nebojša Dugalić, Miodrag Radovanović, Mihailo Janketić, Vojin Ćetković, Radmila Radovanović, Jelena Petrović, Radovan Vujović, Ana Simić, Ivan Pantović – reflect on this contradictory, fierce and deceitful passion that moves the world, burns it, brings people together and apart, soberly, controledlly, but with no light distancing or spilling over into the comic, ironic, parodic and hiding behind it.
Jela's husband Djordje, played by Nebojša Dugalić, amorous and weak, with a parochial complex, lenient and solicitous, far from realities of life, or his uncle, a tutor with no illusions about people and love, grave, bitter and caring Obrad played by Mihailo Janketić. Ljubomir Nestorović, played by Vojin Ćetković, a mysterious air of times past clad in white or time to pay one's dues clad in black, a soul neither entirely romantic nor crudely covetous, collecting and disappearing. And then the older, younger and young Nedeljković, father Jakov played by Predrag Ejdus, forever in monetary troubles, but never without humour and seductive autoirony, Jela who conquers the awareness of a dramatic character through guilt and sin, played by extraordinary Anita Mančić. Scents and chimes of old theatrical world and flowers that Egon Savin recognised and managed to establish with no cheap emotionalism, genuinely, invoking the emotions that reflect and question.
Love, especially old love, however we chose to understand it, can never be forgotten, and Savin doesn't want that oblivion either. Love each other and be happy! Who dares to utter this simple sentence nowadays! A play you can recommend to your friends.