Festivals and Prizes
- Festival Small Stages, Rijeka, Croatia
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ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
Post-theatrical drama: Locusts by Biljana Srbljanović
In the time when everything is relativized and when the market is rationalized, the role of play Locusts is to deal, using aesthetics of risk, with ultimate emotions. In those emotions there are always possibilities of breaking violating taboos. That breaking takes place when spectators are expected to establish some relation toward things that are happening in their presence, consequently, when there is no safe detachment that seemed to supplies aesthetic difference between audience and stage. Precisely the reality of this play, the fact that it is playing with those bounds, predetermines it for activity in which “ethical“ reality is not formulated, but spectator is confronting with abysmal fear of getting old and also from an old age. In this way it once more becomes obviously that this play achieves its aesthetics and ethics reality by realization of horror, hurt feelings, disorientation which exactly through events and actions that seem “abnormal“, asocial and cynical, confront spectator with his own presence, but he is still shocked with recognition, he still feels fun, pain and pleasure.
Ph.D. Aleksandra Jovićević (in Theatre program of play Locusts)
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REVIEWS
It would be easy to tell that new Biljana Srbljanović's play
in some way is Family stories told using the same language
as in America, part II. It would be easy, but unfairly,
because Locusts is one more major breakthrough in already
amazing career of our famous playwright. Director has succeeded,
with the help of inspired theatrical company, to pull through
one astonishing note, one new quality in Biljana Srbljanović's
plays. It is tenderness that finds its foothold in understanding
of human nature. This is probably the best play ever made
in our country by plays of Biljana Srbljanović.
Boban Jevtić, Yellow Cab, May 2005
...Beyond the moment, out of reality, in fantasies about what has been and what maybe will be, life is delay, deception, game of entrenching, mere and miserable manoeuvring. “Sick was carrying healthy one.“ In the place where chatting replaces activity, there is empire of an old age as a state of mind. There is only one way: You have to fight for yourself. Nothing, or almost nothing, drops down out of a clear sky, nor the rich state lottery will make citizens richer. Let go old people and their stories, tellings and heritage, old father's savings, merits and faults. Work, work and just work, tells Europenized and sharp-witted playwright. Locusts is good, maybe the best play written by Biljana Srbljanović.
League of old people, academician Ignjatović, Mr. Simić and Mrs. Petrović, with great feeling of abandonment, secret guilts and old people's humiliation are playing Miodrag Radovanović, Rade Marković, Nikola Simić i Renata Ulmanski. Fatal egoism of women's, maternal's and marital darkness are brilliantly playing Aleksandra Janković, Jasmina Avramović and Maša Dakić. Male anguish, incapacity, weakness and hypocrisy, powerfully are playing Boris Isaković, Voja Brajović and Svetozar Cvetković. Nadeždu, or how the life goes, in spite of everything, irresistible plays Isidora Minić...
Dejan Mijač was the right man for this bitter, cynical-ironical drama. Finely shaded characters and relations, world as a nausea, shallow water in which small and big fishes bite one another. They are missing gift for life. This is lucid, funny, sparkling, maturely and profoundly well-thought-out production. Landscape painted with locusts that have eaten and keep eating prettiest years of youth. Youth that we have to conquer day after day.
Muharem Pervić, Politika, April 28th 2005
Merry play about dying
...Social critics here is not dominant and playwright judges to no one. She, in the same way as Chekhov (this is a comparison that will make her go crazy!) shows, understands and maybe loves her characters, whose inner life is miserable. Gap between generations is not so important in regard to one incomparably bigger theme that imbues destinies of all characters: theme of getting old and dealing with death. With the exception of Nadežda, that almost symbolic character, they are all unsuccessfully dealing with different forms of dying: senile dementia, social oblivion, indifference of their own children, lost of youthfully beauty... Showing that biggest life battle that is a priori lost, Biljana is more cruel than ever; this statement is only partially true, because beside that cruelty there is also some touching tenderness, which is, among other values of this play, its biggest quality...
Mijač achieved the best result working with actors, in articulation of dramatic action, which in his perception, gain density of classical play and some Chekhov's combination of irony and emotionality. There are some things in this production that could have been overlooked while reading the play; there is a main character, Nadežda, that Isidora Minić played accurately and convincingly, and she is open, lively and healthy, but in some way sad person. Her partner, Vojislav Brajović, persuasively and with sense of proportion rendered character of “TV icon“ Maks, who is very seriously and thoroughly thinking about himself. In “senior category“ there are excellent Renata Ulmanski (Mrs. Petrović), who has, in deeply moving wordless scene, sublimated all pain of parenthood and all affliction of an old age and Nikola Simić, who is in very essential and lightly comical way, played Mr. Simić, as a sad candidate for Academy of Science and Arts and withered old man who still has some unwithering ambitions and (love) wishes.
In “junior category“ (this is very conditional) very prominent were Boris Isaković as Milan, a man who yearns for recognition and respect of his family, although he feels disgust for themselves and for himself and Maša Dakić who has in excellent graphic way played Alegra, monster-child who would you like to strangle... It wouldn't be fair to skip other actors: Aleksandra Janković as Dada, who is affected, selfish and rather stupid; Jasmina Avramović as harsh and unhappy Žana, Rade Marković as senile Mr. Jović, Miodrag Radovanović as flippant Mr. Ignjatović and Svetozar Cvetković as Fredi.
Ivan Medenica, Vreme, May 5th 2005
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Cast and crew
