Theatre fame number 10: “Angels in Warsaw”

Almost 4 hours pass amazingly quickly, although it is not an easy or light show. It's a performance that requires emotional, sometimes even stuffy from tension, but at the same time hypnotizing with its intensity.

As part of my small “Theatrical Fame” – for the tenth time – I come to a performance, after which it is hard to just return to everyday life and pretend that nothing happened. Angels in Warsaw in Dramatic Theatre is simply a theatre that does not give comfort to indifference. Almost 4 hours pass amazingly quickly, although it is not an easy or light show. It's a performance that requires emotional, sometimes even stuffy from tension, but at the same time hypnotizing with its intensity.

The creators carry the viewer to the 1980s, in the mediate of the AIDS pandemic itself – a time of fear, moral panic, social exclusion and political indifference. It's a communicative about a planet that learned to justice very quickly, but he couldn't feel sorry for very long. illness becomes more than a medical problem here – it is simply a symbol of social fear of otherness, of what escapes conservative norms and convenient definitions.

Materials of Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw, Fot. Karolina Jóźwiak

The strongest thing about this show is that it does not bring its heroes to suffering. Angels in Warsaw they show people full of contradictions – loving, toxic, lost, sensitive, selfish and heroic at the same time. The relation between heroes is ambiguous and so highly true. There are no simple divisions between good and bad. There is simply a man – with his fear, loneliness, request of closeness and desperate effort to find meaning.

The large force of the show is its form. The moving scene gives the full a unique rhythm and dynamics. Spaces change smoothly, almost filmy, and the viewer has a sense of constant movement – as if the planet of heroes never let them stop. This phase plan is very good with the emotional chaos of the show. Thanks to this even long dialog scenes do not lose tension, and the performance breathes and pulsates almost physically.

There's no stopping at acting either. Margaret Niemirska creates an highly poignant function – cost-effective but full of emotional burden. Catherine Herman brings on the phase energy and anxiety that cannot be ignored. Marcin Bosak, in turn, builds a character with a immense strength and interior crack that stays long in memory. It is thanks to specified roles that the performance becomes not a publicist manifesto, but a profoundly human story. But each performer brings his own sensitivity and strength to the stage, creating ambiguous, moving, memorable characters. due to the fact that don't you want to hatred the characters played by Piotr Siwkiewicz, whose career way seems strangely familiar? Or at the same time blame and realize the hero Konrad Szymanski, who was simply afraid... It's the full cast. Angels in Warsaw are not only a communicative of the past, but a living, pulsating evidence to human experience—with all its weight and light.

Materials of Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw, Fot. Karolina Jóźwiak

It is besides worth appreciateing how the show operates with emotions without inexpensive blackmail. He's not trying to force emotion. It's not moral. Rather, it forces you to look – sometimes very uncomfortable. And I think that's why it works so hard. The viewer does not leave the theatre with a sense of seeing a “important topic”. Rather, it raises the question of why so many social exclusion mechanisms inactive look acquainted today.

Because although the action takes place decades ago, it is hard to escape the reflection that as a society we are not as far as we like to think of ourselves. The years of democracy have passed, the language has changed, the aesthetics of public debate have changed, but the problem of accepting others continues to return with amazing force. It is inactive easy to dehumanize those who live differently, love differently or simply do not fit in the convenient image of “normality”.

And possibly that's why this show sounds so much today. due to the fact that it's not just about AIDS and the '80s. It talks about social exclusion mechanisms that are inactive well. The fear of morality. A policy that besides frequently fears empathy more than radicalism. People who had to fight for decades not only for their own dignity but even for the fundamental right to be recognized by the state and society.

Materials of Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw, Fot. Karolina Jóźwiak

After leaving the theatre, it is hard not to think that in a country that is so eager to talk about freedom, community and values, there is inactive a deficiency of simple courage to kind out things as fundamental as legal designation of the lives of LGBT+ people. And possibly that's why Angels in Warsaw They're not a spectacle about the past. They are a very painful spectacle about the present.