Verklärte Nacht
Obsessive and full of naive charm, of memories at the same time carefree, yet cruel - a dialogue about growing old. A dialogue that sounds like a musical score in the listeners' ears. Hence the title of the play - which is the title of a piece by Arnold Schönberg. If the viewer could only imagine a stage interpretation of two great heroines: Lamia and Lamblia, old-fashioned sisters - pianists who live together in a house with a garden - they would find themselves in Michał Bajer's drama.
But this is by no means a vision of a peaceful existence, because the ladies are constantly fighting, reconciling and parting with each other. During a visit to the doctor they accuse each other about madness and psychopathy - behind each other's back, of course. We are not sure whether this is crazy or a normal process to which the women succumb imperceptibly due to blessed forgetfulness. Waves of oblivion bring relief, waves of memories bring anxiety. And so both women at the edge of their lives sway to the beat of these tides and tides of (non-)remembrance. And yet the heroines fight desperately for this memory. They water the same unfortunate flower ten times in a row, remembering endlessly their childhood and parents, the fiery romance of Rosa, their relatives and friends. They go to Kazimierz on the Vistula River just to suddenly cancel the trip. They play mother and daughter. They are preparing (they have question and answer cards!) for the visit of Anna, Lamia's daughter. Ida exercises her answers in order to look her best, to seem as normal as possible. But does Anna really exist? Does the vial that Lamia shakes really contain strychnine? The life of two fragile beings is full of riddles and mysteries, like an old-fashioned romance with a dried rose on the last page. When the author finally kills one of the sisters - as in a real crime story - we don't fully believe that it is true. It is presented like poetry. We can take it as if we were looking at an insect sunken in amber. The tense dialogue and poetic licence deserve to be presented by the best performers.
German translation of the play is available.
