Kafki's "castle" in the national - how much laughter and how much horror

photo.Krzysztof Bieliński/ Archives of the National Theater

Here, Miśkiewicz managed something important.I was impressed.You wanted this text, these characters, further analyze, ask about them.This is one of the better performances of this defective season.

I feel a great fondness for FranzKafka's "castle" (if the word "sentiment" fits here the most).In September 2019, I was delighted with the performance of the Impressary LublinKlepisko Theater.He staged a very suggestively adaptation of this novel at the castle (or rather in the castle ruins) inKazimierz Dolny.Directed by Jan Wawrzyniec Tuźnik.

At the time, I had the impression that I entered the world of not one, but many secrets.I borrowed a book from a friend and remembered it with almost one breath.Although this is not an easy reading.

What is it about?

Paweł Miśkiewicz undertook on the small stage of the National Theater.As an adaptator and director.I will not taught that I was a medium enthusiast of what Miśkiewicz has recently done, at least in the national.

And "idiot" according to Dostoyevsky, and "Storm" of Shakespeare (rather should be written on Shakespeare's canvas) had the so -called "beautiful theatrical moments".However, I picked them up as not very consistent with thought, and in the case of a "storm" excessively adding new meanings for the famous playwright.This was served by the drama with other texts.Although it should be added that the team from the national one found themselves in various stage flavors of these staging perfectly.

And the "castle"?Well, I accepted the version of Miśkiewicz this time almost flawless.More, I am very impressed with it.Maybe with some resistance to Barbara Hanicka costumes (although at the same time with full acceptance for her decoration).Maybe with doubts about a few too loudly shouted moments.But yes, this is the creation ofKafka's imagination.I am afraid to write like that, because faithfulness is not considered a director's virtue today.

What is it about? Zaczyna się wystrzałowo, niemal jak rasowa literatura grozy.Geometry k.(againK., taking into account the "process") comes to an unknown town to take a job and start measurements.It turns out that nothing is happening there as if he was expecting.Locals treat him like an intruder, looking at the will of the castle (actually the castle).Which, although not the times of serfdom, decides everything.At the same time, not even the count, i.e. the owner, because he will not exist at all, and an extremely complicated clerical apparatus.

Łukasz Musiał rightly notices in the theatrical program that then the action releases, bogs, likeK.who discovers that he is not able to take his job or get information about his status, or really influence his own fate.And at the same time this increasingly slow plot is packed with so many paradoxes, more truly comic situations.This is a smolically black humor, but he is present there.

I will repeat the question: what is it about.In the first layer with the complications of bureaucratic polyp, whichKafka saw in his family Austro-Hungary.He saw naturally, turning up these complications and demonizing to power.But it is also a more general story about man's power over man.Overwhelming, even if it comes from delusions.Because we do not know if the castle has its effective tools.Also about alienation, strangeness, whichK.He feels at every step in a new microcosm for himself.

Finally, you can put on, just like in the "trial", that it is a great metaphor of human life.Inability to manage it.Colliding with hidden threads and mechanisms.Tangling, just bothering in its logic, and maybe more in the absence of logic.For me it is a truly moving story.

Perfect space

National actors play it right next.This is happening in several places.But really all the time in the same tavern, which is a kind of majaca.Hanick's set designer is masterfully organizing this space.We have doors that are outside the door once, once inwards.A window through which someone speaks several times.A transverse beam that is another additional barrier.

We are accompanied by strange noises, sometimes emphasizing what they talk about or what they do stage figures, and sometimes on the contrary, fueling anxiety during the most innocent dialogues.Rafał Mazur's minimalist music is also supporting this mood.

Procedural is a common bread of this spectacle.Some actors play several characters, and pure fun is used to describeKarol Dziuba andKacper Matula as a twin geometry's similar helpers, while they are very physically contrasted.And yet this story is clear, which does not mean that accessible or undergoing easy interpretations.

The ability to build a separate world is a test for something interesting.Miśkiewicz succeeds.He does not slave the text ofKafka, sometimes he adds something from himself.But he is essentially faithful to him.

It is long, but I rarely felt tired while watching.Yes, amusement, yes, horror, sometimes following myself.You also need to record your resignation from all ad hoc, cheap allusion.Maybe I would prefer the outfits to be less thoroughly, but I do not reject their universality.This is happening in the shade of the Countess Castle, but at the same time and today.

Everything is perfectly refined here.Including the Children's Choir, prepared well by Anna Bednarska.Children sing, but also extremely naturally comment on the action with their behavior, gestures.One of the boys speaks at the end of the first act very suggestively a lot of issues dialogue with the main character.My only grievance is that he deserved to include his name in the program.

Theater full of mouth

Miśkiewicz uses various metaphors expressed in a stage movement very efficiently.He suggestively uses the repetition of the character's silent presence, the overlapping of scenes and dialogues.This is a theater from literature, and yet the theater is full.

As always, the band plays equally in the national.You could have concerns about the clarity of the idea of casting DominikaKluźniak in the main, male role ofK.However, this is quite natural.K., too fragile for a man, he becomes even more like this guide through this strange world. Od pierwszej sceny, kiedy kilkakrotnie ustami kobiety-Kluźniak opowiada o wyglądzie zamku. Całkiem umownie, nierealnie wypadają dzięki płci aktorki quasi-erotyczne sceny z graną przez JustynęKowalską dziewczyną z oberży Friedą.Maybe we feel better with this universal sense of what we are watching?

DominikaKluźniak bardzo dobrze uosabia podskórny lęk, kiedy usiłuje choć wyjaśnić swój status, i obcość, także nas widzów, wobec „miejscowych”.Maybe I just got the impression that in several places the actress had trouble with concentration, as if there was a few days to refine her role.However, she is too much perfectionist (2021 is a year of her success) so that she does not correct it on the occasion of the next performances.

Mateusz Rusin deserves a special distinction in a triple role.Especially as the head of the village. To szampańska zabawaKafki czymś, co jest zarazem przerażające.Rusin plays characters of all ages.As a head of the village, he suddenly becomes much older than the actor himself.This only achieves intonation and facial expressions.

Podobnie przerażająco zabawnie brzmią monologi Barnabasa na temat tego, kim w istocie rzeczy jestKlamm. Ta postaćKlamma obecna, choć nieobecna od niemal pierwszej do ostatniej sceny, to skądinąd symbol. Pytanie czego? Władzy nad drugim człowiekiem? Ale czy tylko? SzamotaninaK.To reach him, and Barnabasa, to understand him.Paweł Tomaszewski as Barnabas runs on the stage as a mixture of Harlequin and Pierrot. Nieszczęsny posłaniec, szewski czeladnik, może w większym stopniu niż samK.It becomes the personification of man's fate and humanity, trampled, and in some sense also life.

In a recent Demir performance and a shred "M.G."At the Warsaw Polish Theater, Tomaszewski seemed too distributed to me, charged with a stage exaggeration.It's just right here.Great role!

Ewa Bułhak is a challenging, busy, and actually full of defenseless femininity. Bezbronnej nawet jeśli wKafki w samej wsi kobiety wydają się na pierwszy rzut oka wręcz dominować nad mężczyznami.In relation to the castle, however, it is different, there we have a relationship, also erotic, women from men, but not only.This actress tells us about it.

And at the very end, without changing anything, even an outfit, Ewa Bułhak manifests itself as a imperious secretary Erlanger.And we also believe in it.She is one of the most characteristic representatives of national professionalism for me.But there is also something more than a stage technique.I will repeat myself: a deep sense of humanity, found in ridiculous, deformed, bizarre forms.

As if for contrast, Marcin Przybylski is her submissive, withdrawn husband.His rimbus is to some extent the delicious parody of Andrei from "Three Sisters", whose actor recently played on the big national scene, at Englert.The association is of course a coincidence.However, he gives the actor's class in my head.

Z kolei wspomniana już JustynaKowalska wydała mi się początkowo zbyt drapieżna jako Frieda.And this changed my impression by developing a whole range of feelings and emotions before the viewers - in a performance so much from traditional psychological drawing.

There must be the rest here.Karol Dziuba iKacper Matula – wciąż młodzi, a tak dojrzali aktorzy.So versatile and flexible in every role in which they should play on the stages of the national.Here vigilant, variable, dangerous, though seemingly so innocent.One would like to see each of them someday in the most important role.

Kapitny Edyta Olszówka and Anna Gryszkówna (plays a change with Aleksandra Justa), the latter in three different roles. Ofiary czy dręczycieleK.?This question appears constantly.Adam Szczyszcza maybe the most developing full range of possibilities of the character taken from the grotesque.Or rather two characters, because he smoothly goes from the role of a complex teacher to the image of another brutal secretary - Mommus.

In the role of a long silent, then commenting on the event mainly the opera singer Dariusz Górski performed neatly singer.When I remember how it rests on the bench, somewhere in the background, for half a performance, I have to give justice to this spectacle as a kind of collective composition.

There is less and less theater of patience for such composing. Here, Miśkiewicz managed something important.I was impressed.I wanted this text, these characters, further analyze, ask about them.This is one of the better performances of this defective due to the pandemic of the season.