After Adam Mickiewicz’s bitter Forefathers’ Eve, anti-Russian yet aimed indirectly against the Polish conservative dictatorship, that became a symbol of resistance against the oppression of PiS-party in culture, Maja Kleczewska returns to the Słowacki Theatre in Kraków. One of principal contemporary Polish directors reaches for another quintessentially canonical Polish text – Wyspiański’s Wesele / The Wedding. A work often,, and not without reason, considered a barometer, reliably testing the climate of our society. If this is the case, the director’s forecast is merciless, as the temperature of public dispute is approaching boiling point. In a show throbbing with magnetic rhythm and music switching between soft and energising, Kleczewska allows Polish skeletons to fall out of the cupboards, predominantly anti-Semitism and the unprecedented cult of the nationalistic guerillas. A series of harrowing sequences, including a widely debated scene depicting the shooting of a group of Jews, lays a heavy accustion. Meanwhile, a band of luminaries enjoy themselves at a wedding in a Bronowice cottage. And there is a war looming large at the threshold, its coming apparently imminent. 

Powerful theatre that makes no compromises. And the consummate Słowacki Theatre troupe at their best: currently indubitable leaders in Poland. Only with such a team can you produce a play on a scale rarely seen on other stages. Scenes of extraordinary panache merge into moments permeated with pure terror, while the clamour of the bickering wedding guests bears none of the festive hubbub of carefree revelry. The wights and spooks that throng to Maja Kleczewska’s Wedding (with dramatist Grzegorz Niziołek, author of a fundamental work on Polish theatre during the Holocaust) are ready to tear at us and at each other’s throats. A powerful, unforgettable experience.

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Photos by Bartek Barczyk