The Tempest
(Burza)
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski (Poland)
Translation Stanislaw Baranczak
Set design Malgorzata Szczesniak
Music Pawel Mykietyn
Lights Felice Ross (Israel)
Starring
Stanislawa Celinska, Andrzej Chyra, Magdalena Cielecka, Adam Ferency, Malgorzata Hajewska Krzysztofik, Renate Jett, Redbad Klynstra, Lech Lotocki, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Marianna Orlos, Teresa Owczynnikow, Jacek Poniedzialek, Maria Swierszcz, Fabian Wlodarek
Set design Malgorzata Szczesniak
Music Pawel Mykietyn
Lights Felice Ross (Israel)
Starring
Stanislawa Celinska, Andrzej Chyra, Magdalena Cielecka, Adam Ferency, Malgorzata Hajewska Krzysztofik, Renate Jett, Redbad Klynstra, Lech Lotocki, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Marianna Orlos, Teresa Owczynnikow, Jacek Poniedzialek, Maria Swierszcz, Fabian Wlodarek
Premiere: January 4, 2003, Teatr Rozmaitosci in Warsaw (Poland)
Co-production Teatr Rozmaitosci (Warsaw), Hebbel Theater (Berlin), THEOREM (association supported by the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union)
« The Tempest satged at the Rozmaitosci Theatre is the first contemporary version of this Shakespearian drama settled in our times. Prospero's enemies come back from Tunis by plane and most of all in business class. They look more like multinational firm directors than Italian souvereigns. Prospero has no magician's costume, but a simple pull-over. Ariel is wearing joggings and Caliban dungarees and a wool hat. The tempest is also modern. It is replaced by the deafening noise of plane engines insered by the composer, Pawel Mykietyn, in the noises of a big city.
...
This « Tempest» is a bitter comment on the reality in which we have been living for fourteen years. Freedom has revealed a too high challenge for a great number of us. Our old sins come back, bad people just switched of costumes. Prospero is bitter and disappointed. He lost not only power, but also his past. Return to Milan doesn't provide him any joy. He is a resigned man. He symbolises all of a generation, contaminated by the idea of having failed in life, whose representatives can be found in all social classes in Poland. Miranda, Prospero's daughter, is not a teenager, as in Shakespeare, but a mature woman who passed over her best times.
...
How to escape from Prospero's island? Is freedom to come out of a return to tradition ? Warlikowski presented the scene of the marriage according to Polish tradition : blessing of the married is accomplished with bread and salt. Faced to the world of swindle and crime, this simple provincial wedding ceremony is felt with an enormous emotional force. »
"A new marvellous world" - in Gazeta Wyborcza
Roman Pawlowski
(fragments)
...
This « Tempest» is a bitter comment on the reality in which we have been living for fourteen years. Freedom has revealed a too high challenge for a great number of us. Our old sins come back, bad people just switched of costumes. Prospero is bitter and disappointed. He lost not only power, but also his past. Return to Milan doesn't provide him any joy. He is a resigned man. He symbolises all of a generation, contaminated by the idea of having failed in life, whose representatives can be found in all social classes in Poland. Miranda, Prospero's daughter, is not a teenager, as in Shakespeare, but a mature woman who passed over her best times.
...
How to escape from Prospero's island? Is freedom to come out of a return to tradition ? Warlikowski presented the scene of the marriage according to Polish tradition : blessing of the married is accomplished with bread and salt. Faced to the world of swindle and crime, this simple provincial wedding ceremony is felt with an enormous emotional force. »
"A new marvellous world" - in Gazeta Wyborcza
Roman Pawlowski
(fragments)
