There is no Ellmit

Dorota Mieszek, CONNOISSEUR. Internet Cultural Magazine.

There is no Ellmit. We will never be given a chance to observe this Scandinavian town. It exists, however, in some measure, on the principle of a symbol, that recrudesces in other plays of the author hiding behind the name of Ingmar Villqist. Therefore we can hear of Ellmit in The Anaerobes, another play after Helver's Night that the author himself put on stage. For except Warsaw's Rozmaitości, we can see it in Łódź, where Łukasz Kos weaved this one-act play among other similar stories from the same series written by Villqist. And in February we have seen the TV spectacle directed by Łukasz Barczyk who set homosexual The Anaerobes against The Cake of Lard with Almonds, a play with lesbians in the background.
The idea of The Anaerobes scenic version is a crowning of the evolution that had begun with the open (together with the spectators) reading rehearsal of the play, that took place on Monday. The director's protection was discharged by the author himself, the actors playing now on the stage were reading then. It was one of the best reading rehearsals in Rozmaitości. Ingmar Villqist must have felt the same way, for he extended it into the spectacle. The opening night took place in the small-audience hall in the Joinery. Small, fusty house with the blacked out windows, giving into the yard - isn't it the perfect place for The Anaerobes?
The play is a frame in life of the couple of gays who have been in relation since a short time and they would like to create a family with a child. A life of which the base is the fear of taking up risks, supported by disbelief in success, because it never succeeded. Sixty minutes picture does not give an unequivocal answer. Though Villqist ends the spectacle with an optimistic conclusion, still does he really give certainty, that from now on everything goes smooth? That The Anaerobes, nourished with oxygen, come out from their hiding places to a day-light?
Paradoxically the atmosphere of manace and uncertainty of the future and of the common existence was present during the reading rehearsal of the play in a higher degree. Action is based on the violent dialogue and words are used in function of the bullets, that is why non-verbal elements give away its authenticity. Lars (Poniedziałek) shutting and opening the window, the patterning rain, the zenith of erotic tensions between lovers enveloped in smoke and red light change the main course of action.