Prešeren Theatre Kranj, Ptuj City Theatre, premiere 22nd March 2023 (part of Maribor Theatre Festival)
Dinner parties are familiar terrain, theatrically speaking, the ideal basis for an exploration of middle-class manners, with the potential for things to go awry as the wine flows. Peter (Aljoša Ternovšek) and his wife Ingrid (Vesna Pernarčič) are playing host to Peter’s old friend David (Miha Nemec), a university professor, and his new partner – and former student – Sofi (Živa Selan). Some jokes are made about the political leanings of Austrian young people over the homemade fig ice cream. Then Sofi reveals she is pregnant causing the room to chill a little and Ingrid discovers a favourite necklace, given to her by a significant Austrian feminist, is missing – has, perhaps, been taken – introducing another layer of tension
In the hands of a different creative team, this might signal the beginning of a social satire, something Yazmina Reza-adjacent or a Ruben Östlund-style excavation of middle class hypocrisy. But director Sebastijan Horvat and his regular collaborator, the dramaturg Milan Ramšak Marković, steer things in another, weirder direction. The disappearance of the necklace, seemingly spirited from their home, is the catalysts for Peter’s unravelling. Firstly, he has an awkward accusatory conversation with their housekeeper, in which he manages to offend her, but comes no closer to figuring out what happened to the necklace. Pretty soon he’s talking to private investigators and shady people in carparks, as the quest takes up more and more space in his life and his mind, causing him to drift further and further away from his comfortable bubble into the parts of society he, despite being a journalist, doesn’t ever have cause to visit.
The narrative becomes increasingly bizarre as Peter’s grip on things diminishes, the tone shifting from dinner party comedy to something altogether more sinister. The sense of unease is heightened by the manner of staging. Horvat has the audience seated on all four sides of the stage, with scenes playing out both in the centre and increasingly, as things get wilder, around the periphery of the space. Dark corners of the theatre are lit up to reveal bathrooms and barrooms, as well as Peter’s childhood kitchen, were we see flashbacks of his emotionally closed-off mother and violent father, a man prone to lashing out.
Horvat enjoys placing his actors in close proximity to this audience. He did this to magnificent effect in his production of Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, about a middle-aged woman’s relationship with a young immigrant. By the end of the show the audience were crammed into the couple’s apartment, sitting in their kitchen and perched on their bed, the action unfolding not just around them but sometimes right next to them. Here we don’t get quite so up-close-and-personal with the cast, but it comes close.
Milan Ramšak Marković’s text enters the realm of psychological horror. Peter installs cameras in his house. He misses deadlines. He becomes increasingly paranoid. His marriage starts to collapse. There’s a cinematic quality to the storytelling, as Peter is sucked down his own rabbit hole. The fact the audience often has to twist in their seats to watch certain scenes adds to the sense of disorientation.
Designer Igor Vasilyev creates recognisable locations with just fragments, a tiled wall here, a wood panelled bar there. The costumes are crammed with social signifiers. David’s red-glasses and box-fresh sneakers telling you a lot about the character before he starts pontificating on political correctness and the moral failing of the young.
Peter’s search takes him to a neighbourhood bar populated by drunks and hookers, a place at once familiar – full of recognisable types – and intimidating, somewhere Peter previously would never have found himself. Eventually, one might say inevitably, Peter ends up in the darkest of places, bludgeoning a man to death in panic and fear. Horvat lurches into full-on horror, sparing us no detail of the man’s mangled face.
While the necklace drives the plot, the article Peter is writing was about violence at the Croatian border, where he watched a young teenage migrant by brutally mistreated by border police. This incident seems to have shocked him deeply, woken him up to the lengths Europe goes to ‘protect’ itself, the ugliness he has managed to shield himself from as an adult. There’s something quite Lynchian in Peter’s awakening to darkness under the rug of his suburban life, a little of Hitchcock in there too. It’s notable that this play by a Serbian dramaturg and Slovenian director takes place in Austria, a country listing evermore to the right where some politicians no longer bother to hide their Nazi rhetoric.
The acting is one of the production’s strengths with Ternovšek convincing as Peter, a man in a downward spiral, unable to pull out of the spin. In the last scenes he lurches drunkenly around the stage, rain-soaked and unsteady, raging at the world. Nemec and Pernarčič pitch their performances well too, though there are some ‘larger’ performances in the smaller roles. Darja Reichman does good work as the amiably sozzled woman Peter ends up having sex with in a grubby bathroom but it’s Borut Veselko as the enigmatic old soak/pub philosopher Jockle who stands out, delivering the final monologue about black holes in an impeccably measured manner. The narrative never quite unsettles as much as it might, its grip isn’t as tight as it could be – it allows itself to get side-tracked – but it’s always atmospheric and skilfully presented, and while not quite Horvat at the top of his game, it is still an enjoyably off-kilter experience.
Credits:
Director Sebastijan Horvat// Dramaturg Milan Ramšak Marković// Set designer and video designer Igor Vasiljev/Costume designer Belinda Radulović
//Composer Drago Ivanuša//Lightning designer Aleksandar Čavlek
Credits: Aljoša Ternovšek, Vesna Pernarčič, Živa Selan, Borut Veselko, Darja Reichman, Vesna Slapar, Miha Rodman, Blaž Setnikar, Miha Nemec
For more information, visit: Borstnikovo.si
Further reading: Interview with Sebastijan Horvat: “All the former Yugoslav countries have a kind of dementia”
Natasha Tripney is a writer, editor and critic based in London and Belgrade. She is the international editor for The Stage, the newspaper of the UK theatre industry. In 2011, she co-founded Exeunt, an online theatre magazine, which she edited until 2016. She is a contributor to the Guardian, Evening Standard, the BBC, Tortoise and Kosovo 2.0
