The Rats
director
Maja Kleczewska
premiere
10 January 2015
running time
120 min. (bez przerwy)
stage
scena duża

PHOTO GALLERY

CAST
KAROLINA ADAMCZYK
KAROLINA ADAMCZYK
Polina (Paulina Piperkarcka)
ELIZA BOROWSKA
ELIZA BOROWSKA
Pani Hanna (Pani John)
ALEKSANDRA BOŻEK
ALEKSANDRA BOŻEK
Pani Knobbe
MAGDALENA KOLEŚNIK
MAGDALENA KOLEŚNIK
KARINA SEWERYN
KARINA SEWERYN
Selma Knobbe
MARIA ROBASZKIEWICZ
MARIA ROBASZKIEWICZ
Alicja-aktorka (Alicja Rutterbusch)
TOMASZ CHRAPUSTA
TOMASZ CHRAPUSTA
Aktor
MICHAŁ CZACHOR
MICHAŁ CZACHOR
Bruno (Bruno Mechelke)
MICHAŁ JARMICKI
MICHAŁ JARMICKI
Dyrektor teatru (Harro Hassenreuter)
MATEUSZ ŁASOWSKI
MATEUSZ ŁASOWSKI
Pan Paweł (Pan John)

CREATIVES

director – Maja Kleczewska

writers – Maja Kleczewska, Łukasz Chotkowski

dramaturg – Łukasz Chotkowski

set and lighting designer, video, found footage – Wojciech Puś

music – Paweł Krawczyk

costume designer – Konrad Parol

SYNOPSIS

When Abraham finds out from the Angel that he is not here to sacrifice Isaak, he asks: How can it be? Have I come in vain? I will nevertheless mutilate him to let him bleed a little. Will that please you?

 

Similarly to other dramas, Noble prize winner Gerhart Hauptmann presents in The Rats the world as the decay of principles and values. Looking at the misery of life, he always said that he wanted to be in charge of rebellion that will infuriate the public and politicians. He has forced the audience to take a look at things they don’t want to see.

 

Maja Kleczewska and playwright Łukasz Chotkowski relocate the play to modern Warsaw. Particular scenes of the play involve Warsaw elite circles who usurp their right to reprimand and educate the society. The play’s line-up consciously includes actors who every day appear on the silver screen in the majority of Polish households.

 

Similarly to the work of German playwright, the play also features people shunt on the sidelines. The world presented as part of the play cannot easily differentiate between good and evil, and the actors are entangled in complex relations specific to their groups. Uncontrollable, artificial desires which motivate The Rats lead them directly to self-destruction. Individuals and the entire society is the price they will have to ultimately pay; after all, if you can dream about and buy anything, then you can also sell anything you want; especially a person.

 

The Rats staged in Powszechny Theatre is only second adaptation in Poland after the world premiere which took place in 1911.

 

For adults only.

REVIEWS
  • The Rats opposes the egoism and self-content of Polish middle class, including the theatrical environment. It also objects to the commercialisation of theatres and the deprivation of their right to criticise, and it disagrees on artists who ingratiate themselves with the audience.   (Aneta Kyzioł, Polityka, 14.01.2015)  
  • The power of the Rats lies on excellent actors who ran away from the Polish Theatre in Bydgoszcz to Warsaw. However, the play also features the long-standing actresses of the Powszechny Theatre, such as Eliza Borowska (hats off to her courage!). And how could we forget about a witty and self-ridicule Tomasz Chrapusta who made his debut, and the impeccable work by Wojciech Puś (scenography, lighting, video). The Warsaw glitterati may not like this play. The rats of small culture will bite to the first blood.   (Mike Urbaniak, Gazeta Wyborcza - Wysokie Obcasy, 10/11.01.2015)  
  • It’s a story about a poor housemaid who is forced to sell her child. Her tragedy evolves in the shadow of anodyne intrigues of artistic bohemia, but the play does not only discusses bourgeois hypocrisy, bigotry, and phoniness, but also the radical defence of artists’ right to speak on and from the stage about crucial, bitter, and painful matters. (...) Kleczewska does not leave any room for illusion. Her diagnosis is brutally sane and she shouts out her own proclamation: you are either an artist who is relentless in searching for the truth, sometimes chaotically, blindly, by provoking and going round in circles, risking exaggerations, ridiculousness, and looking in the darkness to defend the victims at the end, or you are a liar whose thirst for quests and ethical attitude is replaced by a small stabilisation, magazine covers, and rubbish we see on morning shows.   (Michał Centkowski, 09.12.2014)  
  • The play also presents the methods for enslaving the subordinate employees of the theatre, which is manifested in relations between producers and actors, who must passively succumb to the former and agree to anything and everything because otherwise they will not be given another role. The actors take a beating for being mixed in market mechanisms, their conservatism, and complements addressed to the audience with low expectations. (...) The staging is full of pathos and farce, perversions, and transgressions. The actors are merciless in  reviewing human faults, and they also passionately present how oppressive the social mechanisms can be.   (Karol Owczarek, Teatralia, 31.01.2015)
Teatr Powszechny
im. Zygmunta Hübnera
ul. Jana Zamoyskiego 20
03-801 Warszawa
tickets 22 818 25 16
22 818 48 19