Heartefact House, Belgrade, premiere 14th December 2023
Patrik Lazić’s new show for Heartefact is based on Gaspar Noe’s 2018 experimental psychological horror film of the same name. Lazić was interested “what it is in human nature that starts to destroy things just when all things are going right, when everything is good”
Created by Lazić and dramaturg Dunja Matić, and based on an initial idea by Aleksej Bjelogrlić,it follows the same basic premise as Noe’s film. After a group of people drink spiked sangria, things start to unravel. In this case it’s four actors – Aleksej Bjelogrlić, Anja Ćurčić, Pavle Mensur and Andrej Nježić – who become collectively intoxicated on spiked sangria while partying. All their messy relationships and hidden dark secrets start to emerge, their true colours come to the surface.
The production uses Heartefact’s performance space, a high-ceilinged, salon apartment in the centre of Belgrade, in a highly creative way. While the stage area is contained in the main room, all the surrounding rooms are used in the performance, taking the audience into all the spaces of the apartment via video footage. This erasure of the border between the actors and the audience works well, making the experience much more intense and intimate. Multiple rooms, including the bathroom and the terraces, are incorporated into the fabric of the performance. The scenography is minimalistic, with a cupboard on top of which sits a bowl of sangria serving as the centrepiece, as well as the main driver of the plot. But the show’s use of video is far from simple.
Before the performance, a short text about hallucinogenic drugs is presented on the TV set. The same TV is later used to broadcast the footage from a GoPro camera which the actors carry into the different rooms, simultaneously tying the two performances (the play inside the play, and the play itself) together, and adding to the overall dynamic. The actors used the camera to expose the vulnerability of themselves and each other. The camera allows for its own form of intimacy with faces shot in extreme close-up. Some of what we see is at first humorous (like Nježić’s character in the bathroom), but then things slowly become more unsettling and scarry (Mensur beating up Bjelogrlić) and finally tragic (Bjelogrlić discovering the incestuous relationship of Mensur and Ćurčić). The overall shifts in atmosphere and in the characterisation is also well handled by Lazić and the actors, the tone steadily climbing from funny to something darker, as we are shown the psychological deterioration of the characters. Rhythmically, the middle part of the performance has the most momentum, while the first and the last third feel a little slower in terms of pace.
Climax, Heartefact House
The creative team have done more than create a morality play about the perils of getting wasted, and focused more intensely on the characters’ emotional lives and the deeply rooted human need for destruction. The original story is translated into the Serbian milieu through a few textual interventions – they add rakia to the sangria and there are plenty of untranslatable Serbian jokes – all of which works well. The four characters are relatable and accurately represent the youth of Belgrade in their language and behaviour, which makes it well suited for a Serbian audience.
The acting is strong throughout. Anja Čurčić plays a rigid and strong, but secretly vulnerable, director, while the others are actors in her play; Aleksej Bjelogrlić is a middleman of a sort, hiding a wound from his unreciprocated love for Ćurčić; Pavle Mensur is a local thug who grows more violent as the time passes; and finally, Andrej Nježić plays a sensitive gay man, deeply aware of the world around him but unable to change it. These characters might be stereotypical, but their emotional lives given more depth, something enhanced by their physicality and the way the scenes of choreographed. By the end of the performance, they are stripped bare of their masks and costumes (physically and metaphorically) however they are not free by any means – which is as real as modern life gets.
It’s hard not to watch the performance and make a partial comparison to Noe’s film. While that movie, was shot in an almost documentary style, the screenplay was largely created through improvisation. The actors were mostly ballroom dancers with little to no acting experience, which aided in the creation of a naturalistic setting. All these facts made me wonder if it was possible to do a solid theatrical adaptation of Climax in a completely different manner, especially in an unconventional space like the Heartefact apartment.
Although the ending of the show successfully translates the film’s sense of tragedy and trauma, Lazić and Matić err away from the gruesomeness and brutality of the original film. Even though I appreciates the energy and emotion of this performance, along with the inventive use of video in this unique theatrical setting, I found myself missing these more stomach-turning elements, the blood and grittiness – especially since violence among the young is such a hot topic in Serbia today.
Credits:
Authors: Patrik Lazić i Dunja Matić//From an ide by: Alekseja Bjelogrlića//Costume: Yllka Brada//Music: Tadi, Bijat
Cast: Aleksej Bjelogrlić, Anja Ćurčić, Pavle Mensur, Andrej Nježić
For tickets and more information, visit: Heartefact.org
Further reading: interview with Patrik Lazić: “Making theatre today is one big balancing act”
Ana Ogrizović is a Dramaturgy graduate from Serbia, recognised by multiple poetry, prose and playwriting competitions. She is currently pursing a Masters degree and editing her first poetry book.
