Demons in America

Anna R. Burzyńska, TYGODNIK POWSZECHNY

In "Angels in America," Krzysztof Warlikowski displays a masterly control of the art of performing: he sets in motion the show's impressive machinery to build an epic story full of momentum. Although it touches on the most vital problems, it unfortunately does not move us as much as it should.
"Catholics believe in destiny. Jews believe in guilt," says a rabbi to one of the characters in Kushner's play. Not only Jews: in Warlikowski's performance,
guilt - understood as both a stamp impressed in every single character and a burden carried by the whole society - is a soil on which dramas and tragedies thrive. So it was in his earlier "Tempest" and "Dibbuk": characters in both plays were forced to recognize guilt - their own and that inherited from ancestors - before they could begin a strenuous journey of catharsis and liberation.
In Warlikowski's theatrical style, the catharsis has precisely such significance: it exposes traumas, bares the subconscious and brings to light hidden motivations. The choice of "Angels in America" as a "psychoanalytical" play therefore seems obvious. In interviews before the première, the director asserted that this was a universal drama, perfectly suited to initiate discussions not only about human condition in the broad sense, but also about contemporary Poland.
These possibilities are indeed contained in Kushner's multi-plot drama and TR Warszawa's actors make most of them. The play (cleared of details such as "our president Reagan" in Jacek Poniedziałek's skillful translation) accurately describes tensions that tore America in the 80's and that are so pronounced in today's Poland. On the one hand: disappointment with capitalism, attempts to find a new image both for the right and the left, difficulties in squaring up to demons of the past, re-evaluation of national mythology and redefinition of patriotism. On the other hand: crisis of faith and family, growing atomization of society, careerism and workaholism, and, last but not least, sexuality, illness and death - things most natural and most controversial at the same time.
Thus, the problem is neither subject nor ideology; Warlikowski perfectly balances proportions between personal, intimate play and committed play, hence inviting unobtrusively to discussion on what ails our society. The problem, in my opinion, is the emotional and very American tone of Kushner's text. The proverbial "do you want to talk about it?", the incessant talking about feelings, the affirmative "you are fabulous creatures, each and every one" to the audience - all of it provokes laughter, or at best mistrust and a sense of being removed.
Warlikowski struggles to overcome the weaknesses of Kushner's play by creating a distance and infusing irony and humor into the atmosphere. He asks questions rather than giving answers or preaching; the audience has to decide on its own what to think of the rush of different plotlines and events; in what way the spheres and esthetics combine, though incompatible at first glance. In the monumental but at once light and almost immaterial stage setting by Małgorzata Szczęśniak various levels of reality meet: hospital beds and a dancing club pole, a Jewish cemetery and a cheaply furnished middle-class parlor, but also Antarctica and expanses of the stratosphere. Translucent and drawn up walls open this microcosm up to other worlds; the characters' distorted faces are reflected in tarnished, uneven mirrors. The world the characters live in is made of reflection, doubleness, ambiguity which finds their expression even in the double casting.
The brilliant and creative acting is the strong point of the performance. "Angels in America" is worth seeing above all for the "impossible" duet of Roy M. Cohn (Andrzej Chyra) and Ethel Rosenberg (Danuta Stenka). The executioner is a cynical lawyer corrupt to the marrow, a homophobic gay and an anti-Semitic Jew. The victim is a Jewish communist, spy and traitor, but at the same time the mother of two sentenced to death in a show trial. Their strange relationship, based on mutual attraction and repulsion driven by similarities and differences, is sparkling with various emotions, from contempt, hatred and anxiety to an almost erotic tension.
Chyra creates a character both repulsive and demonically seductive; an ingenious gambler who had once rejected all dogmas and for whom the only accessible kind of truth is the truth of the dying body. Exuding hatred, he struggles to retain a modicum of dignity at the expense of others although deep at heart he longs for forgiveness. It will be granted to him in the end, but in the form of the Kaddish, a post-mortem prayer. Stenka's hypnotizing rendition is built with small gestures and looks, of her voice when she delivers the few lines of her character, of the way she holds her handbag and adjusts her hat. The scene in which Cohn makes her sing a Yiddish lullaby to him is one of the intense moments in the entire play - a tragic fight of the two on both sides of a narrow divide between life and death.
Another pair whose fate we watch with interest is the Mormon couple of Joseph and Harper Pitt. Thanks to the director's efforts and actors' work, this most schematic subplot - a story of an unloved, depressed and confined-to-her-house young wife and her conservative, careerist and crypto-gay husband - strikes with consequence and truth. Maciej Stuhr, up to now seen almost exclusively in films and shows and whose acting differs significantly from that of Warlikowski's regular collaborators, creates a very convincing picture of a man who travels against his will into the dark realm of his own ego and does not return purified - in contrast to other characters. Maja Ostaszewska performs Harper with deceptive lightness: she emphasizes her character's childishness and naïveté to the amusement of the audience. Thanks to humor (which also finds its expression in tautological playing out of Harper's hallucinations), the audience, not yet discouraged by emotional blackmail, probes deeper into the reasons of the character's illness and wants to sympathize with her as well as to understand her. The questions of love, family disintegration, search for identity and the sacrifices it entails (Harper destroys herself, while Joe - the others) are delivered without sentimentalism, clearly and movingly.
What fails to convince is the main plot of the play: the story of Louis and Prior. Tomasz Tyndyk as Prior remains unconvincing even when he faces a deathly disease and the betrayal by his partner; his character is so bland and shallow that it is really hard to imagine what else, apart from an attractive body, someone as intelligent as Louis (Jacek Poniedziałek) can see in him. His transformation after receiving the gift of prophecy from God is equally poorly emphasized. Warlikowski decided on a strong theatrical effect when he made Prior resemble to Christ, but it is purely superficial. Despite spectacular theatrical machinery the scenes with the Angel, fundamental to the significance of Kushner's play, lack of weight; as a result the theological layer of a drama dealing with destiny, mission and rebellion against the Absolute, relations between God and His creation on the one hand and between people and God on the other seems of no consequence. However, we can see distinctly all the text's weaknesses: its cheap sentimentalism and pretentious symbolism.
I realize that "Angels in America" is an extremely difficult performance requiring maximal concentration and emotional devotion from the actors during all the six hours of the play. I also know that just as it was with "Dibbuk", it will condensate and intensify, that characters will mature and become suffused with emotional truth. Then the questions not only of guilt, punishment and forgiveness, but also of destiny and difficult love in this world and the other will resound with full force.