Just forget How I Didn't Kill My Father and how much I Regret it, with which Mateusz Pakuła moved the audience of the Boska Komedia / Divine Comedy to tears and won last year’s festival. The Kraków festival opened doors to the world for How I Didn’t Kill.., a production that domestically has become the most lavishly awarded performance of recent seasons. Mateusz Pakuła nonetheless refuses to dine out on his success, a reason why he did not write a sequel to the previous play and also why Złote płyty / The Golden Records are light years away from How I Didn’t….
It is 1976, NASA offers a unique commission to the famous cosmologist and promoter of the universe Carl Sagan. With his hand-picked team, he is expected to select the material for the Golden Records that the Voyager interstellar probes will take into Space. They will be like a letter in a bottle to representatives of alien civilisations, sentient creatures from other planets, at the same time providing a calling card of the Earth and its humanity. Members of the special team can draw from humankind’s achievements in art, music and science, and refer to the most significant historical events. What is it that we should be proud of most? The answer to the question proves harder than it initially seemed. The more so, as a strange bald man named Dick Black is sitting in the corner, voraciously consuming Happy Meals and constantly receiving calls from “powers that be”. NASA issues directives: no nudity, no violence, no wars. Even musical choices spark unexpected controversies...
The Golden Records is half-comedy and half-musical with hits from the Carl Sagan (and later) era. We hear music of Nazareth, Led Zeppelin, Louis Armstrong, Kate Bush, and others. Witty and nostalgic, this theatre leaves a bitter aftertaste. Because, really, is there anything we can be proud of?
There is certainly Emose Uhunmwangho’s sheer force of personality, her voice, and, which she demonstrates for the first time, her knack for comedy. She is the undisputed queen of this production.
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Photos by Łukasz Giza
