The National Theater in Prague decided to bring a bold, perhaps at first glance, almost "suicidal" experiment to the stage of the Estates Theatre. After years of disinterest in the iconic representative of socialist realism, Maxim Gorky, the creators decided to return to the theater the play of this Russian writer and playwright Vassa Železnova. For their purpose, they chose his text from 1910, which, unlike the version from 1935, had not yet been imbued with the ideology associated with the events in Stalin's Soviet Union at the time.
Although Gorky wrote the play as a metaphor for the decay of a "rotten" capitalist society, but when one thinks a little about what is happening in contemporary Russia, one can observe clear parallels in the production with Putin's authoritarian policies and with a state run by capitalism, where an individual who is not related to the so-called by the "top", he has no chance to apply freely. The only thing left for him is to keep his mouth shut and his step, because he is dependent on almost everything only what is served to him by the official state power. Perhaps the author himself had no idea what a deep legacy he left in his detailed sketch of the characters and relationships of one Russian family. Finally, Gorky, although he stood on the pedestal of state-recognized art throughout his life, also came into conflict with Stalin and his vision of where Russian literature should go towards the end of his life. Nothing new under the sun. The clash of intellect with political power is a kind of well-established tradition in Russia. In the spirit of the opulent declarations of contemporary politicians that the state can be managed like a company or a hospital, the main character of Gorky's play Vassa tries to manage her own family in the same way. A family business will remain viable only if each of its members is completely devoted to it. And Vassa subordinates all his actions to this goal, even at the expense of his personal life. The dominant businesswoman is able to provide for every member of the family, but in return she expects their absolute loyalty, as if her members were only employees. They find themselves in a gilded cage from which there is no escape. And even if they wanted to try, they run into the problem of lack of money. All attempts to escape from the family fail due to the fact that they cannot take care of themselves without Vassa. However, this constant wandering in a circle must eventually culminate in the tragic outcome of the main heroine's fate, which, although it was not in the original draft, makes surprising sense in the dramaturgical context of the production. Director Jan Frič, in collaboration with stage designer Dragan Stojčevski, placed the original vision of the production in a sterile space with a dominant wooden table in the middle, evoking flashy commercial business centers, full of reflections from flashing fluorescent lights. The metaphor of the dying whale at the beginning of the show perfectly captures the image of the decay of the company and family relationships, but at the same time it refers to the fact that after the demise, something new must come. Marek Cpin's costumes evoke a certain uniformity, which in the case of Zuzana Stivínová, the representative of the main character, borders on military elements, typical of most dictators. In addition to Vassa, Pavel Vančura in the role of her son Pavle will also impress from the acting performances. The overall grasp of the template is very expressive, both in terms of art and in terms of acting. The dialogues sound mechanically in an almost colorless intonation, as if the actors of the production were only parts of a large machine controlled by the central character. In any case, the directors managed to discover something new and inventive even in a text that is more than a hundred years old. This is also evidenced by the 2021 Theater Critics Award in the prestigious category of Production of the Year, which the show won. It seems that the drama of the National Theater, despite the long break caused by the pandemic and the change of artistic management, stepped into the 2021 / 2022 theater season on the right foot.
Vladimír Dubeň