FAZ and LA Weekly on Festival Dialog-Wrocław and Jarzyna’s T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.

A review of the festival Dialog-Wrocław by Renate Klett have appeared recently in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung". The author is a German theater critic who writes, among others, for „Süddeutsche Zeitung“, „Neue Zürcher Zeitung“ and „Theater heute“. She says as follows:

“The best and the most remarkable performance this year once again comes from Poland. While at the last Dialog it was ANGELS IN AMERICA by Warlikowski that was head and shoulders above other performances, this time the trophy belongs to Grzegorz Jarzyna for T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. It is a stage adaptation of Pasolini’s film “Teorema” which describes how human body and soul long for redemption and integration.

The first scene shows a padre padrone behind the desk, his wife at the window, his brother and sister combing each other’s hair and a maid setting the table, while in the background imperious church bells are tolling. This scene is played three times in a row with slight modifications. Subsequently, a mysterious stranger arrives, the bells get quiet and the bodies wake up – the stranger sets everybody free towards desire and despair. Then he disappears as suddenly as he arrived.

Jarzyna creates affectionate but also comical images in the seduction scenes. He doesn’t reveal the stranger’s secret. He skillfully creates a sense of suspension through scraps of secret wishes and dreams. In a short film projected on a screen during the performance some passers-by are asked if miracles happen. In theatre they do and this is one of them.”

Also "L.A. Weekly" writes about T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. in theit review of the Dialog festival:

"T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. is a sequence of cinematic images (with terse dialogue interspersed) aimed at demonstrating how the pressures of our contemporary global economy on domestic relations have segregated us from faith, tradition and the capacity to love. It’s the story of a wealthy manufacturer whose family is destroyed by carnal attractions to an enigmatic visitor. The family members’ primal attraction to the stranger is compensation for the hollowness of their own existence. One of the evening’s biggest laughs came when a character asked the maid if she knew how to speak — the laughter triggered by the awareness that to that point, the production had been mostly a sequence of visual tableaux — stunning for both their composition and their economy of gesture".