In Donna Anna’s Chamber
Giovanni by Grzegorz Jarzyna is an excellent example of contemporary Polish theatre. The director based his production on Mozart's Don Giovanni and Molière's Don Juan, but he handles it like his own private property. The critics are astounded.
Michael Hendelzalc
Warsaw; Grzegorz Jarzyna, a thirty-eight-year-old Polish theatre director debuted only at the end of the eighties after the downfall of communism in his country. Today he is the manager of Teatr Rozmaitości, a small stage situated by one of the city's main arteries, where a month ago he put up Giovanni - a play that triggered off heated arguments among Warsaw theatre critics. Production so special with all probability will be presented on European theatre festivals this year. To appreciate it fully, one should know both works it is based upon: Mozart's Don Giovanni to the libretto of Lorenzo da Ponte, as well as Molière's Don Juan, on which da Ponte founded his version. In Jarzyna's production we can hear - recorded especially for the purpose - opera airs, as well as other Mozart's pieces adapted for string quartet and jazzbands that perform onstage. A free adaptation of Molière's text was also used to create a work of art presenting not only the main character brimming with unquenchable lust, but also a hedonistic, decadent society he lives in.
Anyone acquainted with Don Giovanni knows that it begins with a riddle: What happened in Donna Anna's chamber, from which Don Giovanni stole out after he had met her father and killed him in a duel? In the opera Donna Anna claims that a masked man whom she mistook for her fiancé Don Ottavio intruded her room and when - too late - she discovered he was Don Juan, she raised a commotion. Because of Don Juan's reputation as a seducer and the actual fact that he indulges his passions we are inclined to accept this version as true. Jarzyna's performance begins in silence: a woman in silk slip and stockings stands in an ice-filled bathtube of a luxurious bathroom. A man in a suit and a stocking over his face enters. The woman grabs a bottle of champain from a bucket on the table; at first she seems about to hit the man, but she does not. She fills two glasses, for herself and the stranger, but then pours champagne on her cloths. A S&M scene follows; in sensuous ecstasy stockings are torn to pieces. Ottavio with a pearl necklace in hand peeks through the door and in the next moment Donna Anna's father appears; a fight ensues. The masked man kills the father, hitting his head against the bathtub. Only then he takes off the stocking and Giovanni, played by Andrzej Chyra (one of the most popular Polish film actors), appears to the eyes of the audience. The latter part of the scene takes place behind a black screen; we can hear orchestra playing the overture to Don Giovanni. A portico of Opera emerges in the center. Don Giovanni, this time in an evening suit, meets Donna Elvira pursuing him doggedly since she got jilted by him. He sneaks away discreetly to the seats, and she faces his servant Leporello, a white-suited muscleman with a mop of blond hair. To the accompaniment of the overture he recites her a rhymed list of his master's love conquests in various towns of the world.
The argument between advocates and opponents of the performance concentrates upon limits of the allowable: can a director handle Mozart's work like his own property? Why didn't he base his production on Molière? Jarzyna employs opera to smash its own artificiality. Sometimes he allows whole pieces sound the way they were composed. However, they were pre-recorded and soloists deliver airs in an exaggerated operatic manner (the actors onstage only gesture and lip-sync their parts). Incident at the opera serves as a symbol of the world of morality battling with unbridled Giovanni in an attempt to impose its conventions on him. After the performance Giovanni throws an unplanned party in his penthouse. String quartet performs - a piece of Mozart, of course - silhouetted against the sky over the city, meanwhile the guests undress and change into historical costumes before the very eyes of the public, which leads to an "orgy" in the style of Fellini's 8 ½. In its climax point Giovanni appears on the stage riding Leporello the way Marcello Mastroiani rode Anita Ekberg. In Molière's play Leporello rebukes his master in a monologue packed with cliches. Usually an actor drones it in a single breath to underline its emptiness and absurdity. In this production Giovanni gropes Donna Elvira who despite her resentment arrived to the party, while sentences recited by Leporello - "A man of the world chases after fashion. Fashion takes its source in imagination. Imagination is the property of soul" - sound like separate statements, almost a voice of conscience coming from the world of truth. In the peak moment of the party Donna Anna recognizes in Giovanni her father's murderer. To the accompaniment of the air in which she describes what happened in her house a reconstruction of the incident unfolds, this time on the left of the stage. Now it comprises also the events following the father's death that we could not see earlier. It expires Donna Anna knew exactly the identity of her partner in almost perverse affair. In this version - different in some details from the first one - after Giovanni kills the father both lovers continue their act beside his corpse as if nothing happened. Only later Ottavio arrives and Donna Anna changes her partner, in a way forcing Ottavio to end what Giovanni had begun.
It is possible that Giovanni breaks generally accepted moral standards, he does so, however, in a society that accepts this sort of art warmly, even if it does not admit the fact, prefering to dress up in respectable opera costume. But Giovanni, too, becomes sick of decadent pleasures. The scene of revolting gluttony even Hanoch Levin would not consider a disgrace. Statue of the murdered father - impersonated by an actor - sings his air really, not from playback as before. Mozart's music which used to represent fake conventional morals becomes truth itself and defeats the world void of morality, order, law, and even pleasure. The performance is an excellent (unfortunately, there are also worse) example of contemporary Polish theatre in which the director plays central part and has full liberty. Teatr Rozmaitości where it is staged - beside such dramas as Krum by Hanoch Levin or Dybbuk by An-ski (both directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski; the part of Tsaddik in Dybbuk plays in yiddish Orna Porat) - ranks among most interesting.
25-10-2006
translation: Hanna Pasierska