It is difficult to talk in Poland about Ukraine in an unambiguous way, as Ukraine is the most familiar and at the same time the most exotic of our neighboring countries; it is our mythical borderland Arcadia and a horror-like land in one. In his unusual fictional literary reportage about journeys across Ukraine titled "Przyjdzie Mordor i nas zje, czyli tajna historia Słowian" ("Mordor’s coming to eat us up, or a secret history of the Slavs"), Ziemowit Szczerek challenges all the stereotypes about Ukraine that were created in Poland over the years (or even over the centuries). Szczerek mocks our sense of civilizational superiority, our emotional attachment and resentment, demonstrating what has become of the two nations following the years of Communist reign.
This extraordinary account of travel across Ukraine has been stage-adapted by Remigiusz Brzyk, a two-time winner of the prestigious Konrad Laurel from the Director’s Art Festival "Interpretations" in Katowice. Brzyk is well known to the audience of the Juliusz Osterwa Theatre in Lublin as the producer of the cruelly funny "political tabloid play" by Paweł Demirski, "Once Upon a Time, There Was a Pole, a Pole, a Pole and the Devil" ("Był sobie Polak, Polak, Polak i diabeł, czyli w heroicznych walkach narodu polskiego wszystkie sztachety zostały zużyte").
The stories about young Polish backpackers who travel across Ukraine in search of "the mysterious and the uncanny" become grotesque and absurd every now and then, not losing the character of sharp social observations at the same time. These stories can serve as a pretext for both having a great fun on stage and for taking a deeper insight into us and our neighbors we have more in common with than we tend to think.
Jarosław Cymerman
Premiere: 14 March 2015
Running time: 170 minutes including one intermission
Directed by: Remigiusz Brzyk
Adapted by: Michał Kmiecik
Stage & Costume Design: Iga Słupska, Szymon Szewczyk
Music: Jacek Grudzień
Cast:
Halszka Lehman,
Marta Ledwoń,
Marta Sroka,
Daniel Dobosz,
Przemysław Gąsiorowicz,
Paweł Kos,
Janusz Łagodziński,
Krzysztof Olchawa,
Wojciech Rusin,
Daniel Salman