After Halka from Kraków’s National Stary Theatre and Melodrama from Warsaw’s Powszechny Theatre – spectacles with true panache and new interpretations of literary and cinematic classics – Anna Smolar brings to the Boska Komedia / Divine Comedy Festival a work in an entirely different style and tone. This is a miniature piece for two actors and a multi-instrumentalist that originated on the Small Stage of the Dramatyczny Theatre in Warsaw. 

Belgian writer Stefan Hertmans, known in Poland for such novels as War and Turpentine and The Ascent, seamlessly blends fact and fiction to be rightly regarded as one of the most critical chroniclers of contemporary Western civilisation. Antygona w Molenbeek / Antigone in Molenbeek is his first work taken to Polish stages.

Condensed to but an hour, the play tells the tale of Nouria, a Belgian woman of Arab extraction in Molenbeek: the titular poor district of Brussels, also known as “the little Morocco”. This talented student of law, who wants to collect the body of her brother from the local mortuary, is forced to clash with the soulless machinery of the state, the hidden mechanisms of legally sanctioned violence that strips individuals – whose gender and origin obviously play a major role here – of their fundamental rights. There is therefore no coincidence in the association with the heroine of Sophocles’ ancient tragedy.

Smolar’s miniature drama is Nouria’s lamentation: an exceptional oratorio for a solo actress. She is the extraordinary Marianna Linde, stretching her role between singing, melodeclamation, whisper, and scream. Accompanied live by Maniucha Bikont, she has the subtle Michał Sikorski assuming all male roles. No easy solutions are offered, there is no canvassing for the audience’s compassion. What you receive is raw theatre, powerful in its expression and more than beautiful. A great little show.

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Photos by Karolina Jóźwiak