Once King Lear in Jacques Lassalle’s monumental production at the Teatr Polski in Warsaw, Andrzej Seweryn creates an entirely different tale in his current encounter with Shakespeare’s character. Drawing from his own experiences, including his long cooperation with Peter Brook on The Mahabharata, the actor presents an extremely ascetic theatre, stripped of any deadwood. It is a reminiscence of Shakespeare, a flash from The Tempest, a strange posthumous coda for Lear. In Seweryn’s interpretation, Lear is a mad jester to an extent, with certain traits of Job, and certain traits of a cog in the machinery of the universe that was “born and undone by it”. Lear from the production of Janusz Opryński, the artistic director of the Provisorium Theatre in Lublin, is reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s characters, as Seweryn, unafraid of employing harsh measures, emphasises himself. His Lear oscillates between madness, tragedy, and ghastly buffoonery. Not without reason, the performance bears the subtitle “an actor’s essay”, for it also serves as a reflection on acting. For Andrzej Seweryn, it may be a summary of his journey thus far, even if retirement is not even on his mind. His schedule for the coming years is packed tightly.

→ after the performance, a meeting with the creators led by: Zuzanna Berendt