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T h e...N A T I O N A L...D R A M A...A N D...T H E A T R E...S E L E C T I O N |
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Sterijino Pozorje Festival |
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Novi Sad |
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May 26th - June 5th 2008 |
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FRIDAY - MAY 30th 2008 |
Business Centre NIS-Naftagas |
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19:00 |
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SATURDAY - MAY 31st 2008 |
Business Centre NIS-Naftagas |
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19:00 |
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Branislav Nušić
IT HAD TO BE SO
Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Belgrade |
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Adapted, Directed and Selection of Music
EGON SAVIN
Stage and Set Design ANGELINA ATLAGIĆ
Dramaturg MARINA MILIVOJEVIĆ-MAĐAREV
Stage Speech
LjILjANA MRKIĆ-POPOVIĆ
Premiere:
June 6th 2007 |
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Jakov Nedeljković |
PREDRAG EJDUS |
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Marija |
RADMILA RADOVANOVIĆ |
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Jela |
ANITA MANČIĆ |
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Stanka |
JELENA PETROVIĆ |
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Đorđe Đorđević |
NEBOJŠA DUGALIĆ |
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Obrad Đorđević |
MIHAILO JANKETIĆ |
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Janković |
MIODRAG RADOVANOVIĆ |
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Milan |
RADOVAN VUJOVIĆ |
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Ljubomir Nestorović |
VOJIN ĆETKOVIĆ |
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Sofija |
ANA SIMIĆ / JELENA ANGELOVSKI |
Boy |
IVAN PANTOVIĆ |
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S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T...... |
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It Had to Be So or what’s the price of love
The play It Had to Be So, directed by Egon Savin is not yet another tapestry, embroidered with theatrical thread a hundred years old, found in some dusty corner of an antique shop, but a contemporary play, directed with a sense of melodramatic stylisation. In the local value system of the vulgar and wild capitalism under the absolute domination of money, while human relationships are often reduced to sales-purchases logic and dynamics, the director finds a natural ‘scenery’ for stage revival of the Nusic’s drama on its deepest levels. That is how ‘The History of a Woman Called Jela’ as Slobodan Jovanovic called Nusic’s drama, directed by Egon Savin becomes a drama about the moral decline of a society which has given priority to money compared to other values. Direction, obviously dominative in working with the cast on the psychology of characters, overcomes textual weaknesses and naiveté, turning them into the material for building a drama. Marriage, dowry, patriarchal family, honour, pride, arrogance, vanity, unfinished dreams of love, success, happiness, repressed sexuality – this is the glossary dealt by this costume play which understands contemporariness in a deeper sense than the superficial ‘playing classics in jeans’.
Tatjana MANDIĆ-RIGONAT |
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EGON SAVIN
Professor of Directing at Faculty Of Drama Arts in Belgrade and Faculty Of Drama arts in Cetinje (Montenegro). He has directed in almost all major theatres of former yugoslavia, and his productions toured Nancy, Paris, Warszaw, Tel Aviv, Vienna, New York... He received a series of awards for his direction of works of local and international authors, several Steria award and «Bojan Stupica» Award.
He successfully worked with all production models in existance in these regions: from the production of Farewell Judas that assembled a group of conspirative young artists in mid-seventies who formed one of the possible models of theatrical off-scene, to productions at institutions of national significance – National Theatre in Belgrade, Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica, Macedonian National Theatre.
He successfully Staged works of local and international classics in which he finds concrete clues that reveal the essential power of theatre in our times, linking both the plays and their authors to the concrete space and time in which the production is created, avoiding the realm of daily politics, political vulgarisation and the banal.
At Yugoslav Drama Theatre, he directed productions of Passion According To Živojin by Radoslav Pavlović, Summerfolk by M. Gorky, The Merchant Of Venice by W. Shakespeare and Forest by A. N. Ostrovsky. |
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In the manner of fin de siecle in the Balkans, the play sharply portrays the aloofness crudeness. The bon vivant joviality, haughtiness – there are Nušić' favourite objects of ridicule. In the play It Had To Be So Nušić has exceptionally little sympathy for the amoral vitalism of his surrpundings. Amorality here is portrayed as a part of the bourgeois way of life. Using children and spouses to attain success and prestige is a common occurence in the Nušić-esque Belgrade. And all means allowed when it comes to money. Frauds, treasons, plots, adultery are quotidian in bourgeois urban Belgrade, and not just Belgrade but entire capitalist Europe that is ferociously driven towards industrialisation and destroying patriarchal models. The only thing on which we can build the new productions of Nušić' plays is depicting social relations of his time and ours. It is a great challenge for a contemporary production to show that Nušić the writer of drama and Nušić the writer of comedy are in fact the same person. A writer of voluptuous talent, a creature of theatre
Egon SAVIN |
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| BRANISLAV NUŠIĆ (Belgrade, 1864–1938), alias Ben Akiba. He studied law in Belgrade and Graz; served at consulates of Kingdom of Serbia and founded and managed theatre companies in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Skoplje and Sarajevo. As a youth, he was engaged in journalism and founded and edited numeous gazettes and journals. He received the title of an academic of Royal Academy of Science in 1933. His works predominantly belong to the period of realism, but in his plays he follows in the vein of Kosta Trifković and Jovan Sterija Popović. He wrote bourgeois plays and drawing-room comedies (It Has To Be So, The High Seas, An Ordinary Man, The First Trial), whereas his greatest success were comedies about bourgeouis society of Srebia at the turn of the century. In a houmouristic and satiric way, he addresed the themes of government, the flipside of parliamentarism and primitive beaurocratism: Member Of Parliament, Suspicios Character, Protection, Madame Minister, A Bereft Family, The Deceased, Authority (unfinished). He also wrote fairy tale like plays Lilly and Pine, Eternity, A Woman With No Heart. As a writer of fiction, he wrote a series of stories in the collections of Tales Of A Corporal, Leaflets, Ramadan Nights, feulltones in three volumes under the title of Ben Akiba, autobiographic and memoir works entitled Nineteen Fifteen, about the retreat of Serbian army and people to Greece via Albania, travel reports from Kosovo, and the witty Autobiography. |
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With the four-act drama It Had To Be So, Nušić became, as he once rightfully stated himself, the first in our dramatic literature who tried, regardless of how fortunately it went, writing a social drama. (Earlier attempts by Cvetić, Šapčanin and Manojlo Đorđević fell far short of it. They were usually an old romantic story in which actors wore civil clothes while performing.) In regard to the construction of Nušić’s early dramatic accomplishment, one must notice influences of ‘French marital dramatic literature, even Ibsen’s Nora, in the way how ‘the female character and her tragedy are centred’. Even though it can be observed that Nušić sought to construct such a subject-plot mechanism which would, in a dramatic sense, effectively bring to the foreground and the stage certain social problems of his time which plagued the Belgrade middle-class – lying in the conflict between the rural and urban, in attempts to adjust to the new living conditions.
In the drama It Had To Be So Nušić places in the foreground a family tragedy caused by a social misalliance, the marriage of a poor young man, the son of a penniless community gravedigger (Đorđe) and a spoilt girl from a respectable and wealthy family, who has been fooling around since she was 17 (Jela). In such a marriage, made out of interests (and spite), the husband is not socially equal, his origin and poverty place him into a completely inferior position and force him to constantly feel guilty. He is a ‘puppet’ and ‘necessary evil’ in the hands of a woman (burdened with an unhappy premarital love story); at the mercy of her moods he does everything to satisfy her whims and melt her indifference which is killing him, and in this absolute submission he is ready to accept self-denial, humiliation, even crime (namely, Đorđe has embezzled a large sum of state money). But, interestingly enough, Nušić is neither one-sided nor exclusive, his Jela is at the same time a tragic character, a woman trapped in a loveless marriage, and whose dissatisfaction and frustration are caused by a misfortunate premarital experience (with rich Ljubomir Nestorović), but also by the egocentrism of her family, self-serving snobs obsessed with acquiring wealth and careers, primarily her father, a retired senior white-collar worker, a ‘frivolous bon vivant’ who is playing with the destinies of his daughters and their husbands. At a crucial moment, when she learns that her husband has embezzled state money (for her) and that he is facing arrest, she does everything in her power to save him. Moreover, in these decisive moments a dramatic emotional turning point occurs: (disappointed Jela finally rejects her old flame, truly embracing her husband in dire need. Nevertheless, the events unfold contrary to the married couple’s desires ennobled by love, but dictated by the family and its self-serving interests; having no other choice, in order to save her husband, Jela is forced into infidelity with a man she no longer loves – but whose wealth can save them. And of course, as a woman of honour, she finally finds her way out in suicide – as well as forgiveness and punishment.
Using an analytical technique, Nušić adroitly weaves the plot, skilfully maintains tension, putting new hurdles before his heroes again and again (misunderstandings and surprises), so that the tension rises from act to act, only to reach a truly red-hot dramatic climax in its apex. However, in the dialogue construction there is a felt dominance of melodramatic emotional and moral teleology; the heroes use ‘passionate’ expressive language, they often tend to evaluate and ‘comment on themselves’.
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The drama It Had To Be So was rather highly regarded by the critics of its time, it was ‘seriously discussed in the leading intellectual circles of that time’ (Velibor Gligorić). There were certain critics (Kamenko Subotić in ‘Novo vreme’, for instance) who considered this drama to ‘have epochal significance to Nušić’s work and our drama’; Slobodan Jovanović in Mostar’s ‘Zora’ puts it ‘above other Nušić’s plays, not only because it belongs to a higher class, but its technical side places it above as well. Nušić’s earlier plays were also carefully constructed, but one could notice that the episodes were developed at the expense of the main element. This is the first time that Mr Nušić has put the main issue in the limelight. Episodes are gone (...) In this drama’s composition there is something of that calmness and certainty which is a trait of a literary work well done.’
Josip LEŠIĆ (Branislav Nušić: Life and Work, Sterijino pozorje – Matica srpska, Novi Sad 1989) |
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(...) This forgotten play, written for the competition opened by the National Theatre in 1889 and was not staged until 1900, was known even outside the Kingdom of Serbia - it was published in Czech in Prague in 1902 and in German in Leipzig in 1904. In its time it charmed people with the dignified character of its protagonists and the author’s adroit manipulation of the plot through high-pressure situations in, in the writer’s words, the dignified Belgrade home of a retired clerk.
For Savin it isn’t, as it wasn’t for Nušić either, a Belgrade from a fairytale. It is a world left by the Turkish garrisons only some twenty years earlier, although the customs are still there. And this is where the director brilliantly recognises the similarity of a world in transition at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. All the associations in regard to recognising the situations are achieved subtly, not by recognition of what exists in the world of the dramatic hero, but what is obviously lacking in ours, that is the spectators’ world.
Writing about this drama at the turn of the last century, Slobodan Jovanović called it ‘a history of a woman’, as the destiny of the heroine Jela is what, in a dramatic twist, refracts the entire story about family honour, threatened suicide, a renounced dowry, a sister’s marriage, a former fiancé, a greedy father and an indulgent husband. Savin has found a perfect Jela in Anita Mančić, who proves, with every new role, that we are before an artist of the widest creative range. Her acting skill incorporates the ability to depict with equal persuasiveness the heroine’s pride as well as to evoke empathy with her character. It also enables the lines from the archaic play to sound not only moving, but genuine as well. Such an acting accomplishment has found its true match in Nebojša Dugalić’s interpretation of her husband Đorđe Đorđević. Dugalić very successfully actualises the self-suppressed hero whose every choice is unavoidably wrong. The creations of these two stars of extraordinary diction, who intentionally play on the unavoidably ‘slippery’ edge of the pathetic, find necessary comic relief in the excellent realisation of Jela’s father Jakov Nedeljković played by Predrag Ejdus, Miodrag Radovanović as Janković and Mihailo Janketić as Obrad Đorđević. These three doyens provide clearly set coordinates for necessary mild self-irony, which enables the 19-century middle-class drama to be accepted as a fully legitimate form, which is rendered its visual identity by the set and costumes done by Angelina Atlagić. (...)
Boško MILIN (The Radio-Beograd Third Programme)
Sterian
(...) Anita Mančić as Jela is a true heroine who suffers for her inconsiderateness, and whatever she does she does loo late or at a bad time. For that she shall, as in every Aristotelianly good drama, pay with her life. The frivolous premiere audience, down to the last man and woman, shed a tear during the scene of her weakness in which Đorđe, her husband, finds no strength to deal with either love or honour. Neither with life, for that matter. A fine emotion in the theatre and an incredible event for this insensitive city.
After her Karolina Nojber and many other great roles, Anita Mančić once again shows that she is an actress of cosmic format, even in this text which is not only underestimated but a true cliché. That is, really, what true art is considered to be! Probably one cannot better and more truthfully express the time in which emotions and honour are seen as two completely opposed alternatives in a mentality that knows no true measures, so neither honour nor emotions get their deserved place. This asynchronity is exactly what makes It Had To Be So (and it really is!) by Egon Savin become local, accurate and a national play, stirred up in its depths by the unreliable criteria for everything, which is an eternal characteristic of these parts.
To be what you are not always indicates confusion of the national, ethical, even economic being of a people. In this drama Jela pays for that with her life. (...)
Dragana BOŠKOVIĆ (Danas, 8th June 2007)
In Nušić’ play, Savin recognised what he was looking for in Forest by A. Ostrovski: the power of money and powerlessness, frailty, drama of love. Fortunately, this conflict is neither a one-way, monochromatic, black and white game, nor pamphlet moralism.
Egon Savin and his cast: Anita Mančić, Predrag Ejdus, Nebojša Dugalić, Miodrag Radovanović, Mihailo Janketić, Vojin Ćetković, Radmila Radovanović, Jelena Petrović, Radovan Vujović, Ana Simić, Ivan Pantović – reflect on this contradictory, fierce and deceitful passion that moves the world, burns it, brings people together and apart, soberly, controledlly, but with no light distancing or spilling over into the comic, ironic, parodic and hiding behind it.
Jela's husband Djordje, played by Nebojša Dugalić, amorous and weak, with a parochial complex, lenient and solicitous, far from realities of life, or his uncle, a tutor with no illusions about people and love, grave, bitter and caring Obrad played by Mihailo Janketić. Ljubomir Nestorović, played by Vojin Ćetković, a mysterious air of times past clad in white or time to pay one's dues clad in black, a soul neither entirely romantic nor crudely covetous, collecting and disappearing. And then the older, younger and young Nedeljković, father Jakov played by Predrag Ejdus, forever in monetary troubles, but never without humour and seductive autoirony, Jela who conquers the awareness of a dramatic character through guilt and sin, played by extraordinary Anita Mančić. Scents and chimes of old theatrical world and flowers that Egon Savin recognised and managed to establish with no cheap emotionalism, genuinely, invoking the emotions that reflect and question.
Love, especially old love, however we chose to understand it, can never be forgotten, and Savin doesn't want that oblivion either. Love each other and be happy! Who dares to utter this simple sentence nowadays! A play you can recommend to your friends.
Muharem PERVIĆ (Politika, 8th June 2007) |
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.The
management preserves the right to change
the schedule
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Copyright
: Sterijino pozorje 1998-2008.
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