2024-06-20 03:54:38
The celebrities of the socialist vaudeville didn’t disappear after the Velvet Revolution, they continued to provide live shows and 35 years later they nonetheless haven’t fallen into oblivion. The older ones hearken to them out of nostalgia, some youthful ones, blind to the political context of the time, maybe as a responsible pleasure. And theatergoers are additionally on this music, or the tales of its performers related with it.
Two productions impressed by the singer Karl Gott occurred shortly after one another on Prague levels. In each instances, creators who got here of age solely after 1989 inform about him and socialism generally. Švand’s theater in Smíchov presents director Jakub Čermák’s authentic novel entitled The Return of the King, Divadlo Na zábradlí then a manufacturing based mostly on interval supplies and reminiscences of the six-month visitor keep of Czechoslovak artists within the USA in 1968. Underneath the title God in Las Vegas, they had been collected and formed right into a stage kind by the directing and dramaturgical tandem Petr Erbes and Boris Jedinák.
Underneath communism, the celebrities of present enterprise loved the standing of a marvel not fashionable saints, blessed by the regime’s media, however in fact additionally by public opinion. On this spirit, they’re additionally thought-about in each works, within the titles of which the phrases king and god seem – that’s, historic designations of figures ruling the world, because the king, by God’s grace, bodily represented the absent God on earth.
Each tasks are additionally based mostly on a sure archetype of the hero who goes out to strive his luck on the earth. A singer in Švand’s theater and a complete group of artists in Zábradlí are leaving for the longed-for West. Nonetheless, they uncover that its contours don’t correspond to the unique concepts, in order that they find yourself returning to their homeland in ingloriousness. The latter, like overseas, is extremely stylized on stage, as a result of how else to tolerably seize the realities of the time? Actually not realistically.
Nonetheless, in different respects, and thus additionally within the general impression or that means, the 2 works diverge. It’s as if it mentally fulfills the final aesthetic framework that every of the scenes follows for a very long time, together with communication with different titles within the repertoire.
I sing filled with disgrace and ecstasy
Whereas the Na zábradlí Theater tried to work with documentary materials, a minimum of within the intention, director Jakub Čermák took the trail of non-binding, authentic authorship. On the identical time, he captures the absurdity of a time filled with paradoxes in a totally purposeful approach, with out having to deconstruct the occasions on stage or confront the viewers with alienating components which might be generally overused.
Gabriel Krále, clearly impressed by Karl Gott, was portrayed by Jan Mansfeld (centre) in Švand’s theater. | Picture: Alena Hrbková
His play, The Return of the King, tells the story of the fictional pop singer Gabriel Králov, who desires of an ideal, shining Western-style present in a boring state-owned firm dormitory. However when he goes to an unspecified international nation, he discovers that nobody is curious about his songs there, and he additionally learns concerning the fates of different emigrants.
The king’s mannequin was, in fact, Karel Gott. That is evidenced each by the anagram of the initials and, for instance, the reminder of the hit about Včelka Maje, who’s an area pop star pressured to to migrate. There, the singer is surrounded by German ladies matched with their canine, together with sadomasochistic dominatrixes.
Director Čermák, in whose work the excessive at all times clashed with the low, was in a position to deliver a biblical reference into the parody. Gabriel is harking back to Archangel Gabriel, patron of artists, in addition to the phenomenon of the fallen angel.
Petr Marek, the frontman of the band Midi Lidi, made a basic contribution to the manufacturing of the Švand Theater, who composed and wrote the lyrics for the musical passages. Not solely did the creators elegantly keep away from citations of desecrated musical kitsch, and certainly copyright, additionally they elevated the work to a different distinctive layer. Marek changed the banal songs, whose socialist pictures subliminally and toxically seeped into the unconscious, with similar-sounding harmonies with even sillier lyrics. Like, for instance, within the opening tune Shawls say goodbye, the place the protagonist says “Spring subscription, love is not legitimate / I hear hiya and goodbye scarf, and I consider a flat charge”.
Within the center is Jan Mansfeld as Gabriel Král. | Picture: Alena Hrbková
The distinction to the infantile songs, caricature characters and the plot is then shaped by the deliberately excessively mental statements of the characters, together with the King himself. Which once more creates the specified paradox and room for comedy.
Jakub Čermák has created an unprecedentedly subtle play that, by normalizing pop-music, seems at one other basic theme – the motif of the homeland and life outdoors it. He mocks this too, thereby, for instance, deviating from the widespread view of emigration. Karel Kryl and others are portrayed in Švand’s theater as wretches, whose vote overseas no one cares about.
On this regard, the speech of a personality referred to as the Singer in Emigration is decisive. “Each night time I lock myself up at ten o’clock within the westernmost, remotest, soundproofed workplace of our dissident, anti-state, however American budget-subsidized radio station and play these so-called normalization hits. I play them and dance to them and sing with disgrace and ecstasy,” he says. She is charmingly performed by Nataša Bednářová, in addition to different characters together with the non-musical Slovak Vocalist.
Phrases about disgrace and ecstasy can function an argument for up to date viewers as to why normalizing music remains to be being handled on stage immediately, 5 years after Karel Gott’s loss of life.
On the identical time, The Return of the King presents the soloists of the Švand Theater ensemble as proficient singers, as well as with motion tendencies. This season, they carried out it within the manufacturing Klec bláznů, between which and the present novelty there’s a dramaturgical umbilical twine. The charming Jan Mansfeld excels within the function of Gabriel King. Efficiency sensible, Jakub Tvrdík as his supervisor in Czechoslovakia Ládínek.
The Return of the King is a sprawling manufacturing that may fulfill a large viewers with its various strengths. Nonetheless, this should be accompanied by the truth that the creators don’t spare anybody with their irony.
Theatre
Jakub Čermák: The Return of the King
Directed by: Jakub Cermák
Švandovo divadlo, Prague, premiere on Might 25, subsequent reruns on June 21 and once more on September 14 and 25.
And who’s that God?
Petr Erbes and Boris Jedinák already offered the documentary manufacturing Discoland in Prague’s Na Zabradlí Theater the 12 months earlier than. As a part of analysis targeted on the Nineties, they performed interviews with former staff and guests of the Discoland Sylvie membership in Prague’s Libni. Nonetheless, the collected statements in the end overcame potential theatrical imagery, which fairly illustrated the subject, or fairly turned it right into a fetish.
The novelty referred to as God in Las Vegas is thematically remotely comparable. It focuses on the inventive delegation that went to the New Frontier Lodge in Las Vegas in 1968 and which, along with the Black Theatre, the Laterna Magica and the Czechoslovak State Music and Dance Choir, additionally included Karel Gott and Ladislav Štaidl.
Kateřina Císařová is within the function of Karel Gott within the image from the manufacturing God in Las Vegas. | Picture: KIVA
Relying overwhelmingly on recordings with witnesses was not fairly potential this time. The creators thus resorted to different inspirations, whether or not cinematic, most clearly from David Lynch, or literary. Not like Discoland, their fingers weren’t unnecessarily tied by the textual content and so they might immerse themselves in additional theatricality – although they hold the essential outlines of the true figures, together with the unique names, in order that Gott or Štaidl actually carry out on stage.
The ensuing freedom led to an imaginative grasp of the theme, which, nevertheless, lacks a unified intention that might span the story from starting to understandable finish, and so the consequence disintegrates right into a not completely clear kaleidoscope of pictures. Even the central message is regularly disappearing from them.
For instance, the query of the identification of that God in Las Vegas, because the title of the manufacturing reads, stays unanswered. Is he Karel Gott, who fairly decorates the entire along with his presence, is generally silent, and if he takes the microphone, stylized, however carried out very exactly by the actress Kateřina Císařová, he cuts out 4 songs with the assistance of the vocal harmonizer impact? Or is Ladislav Štaidl, offered as a spineless manipulator and participant in a considerably absurd Czech-American “love story,” the very best, most basic character within the manufacturing? His consultant, the charismatic Vojtěch Vondráček, grew to become the face of the manufacturing because of the picture on the poster.
Recollections of the 68th 12 months are framed by the tragicomic anti-hero Antonín Šůra. Immediately, the utterly forgotten entertainer and actor, greatest identified for his function because the angel Theofilo within the film Hrátky s čert, which the manufacturing may even commemorate, by no means returned to Czechoslovakia. In America, he fell into playing and confronted monetary difficulties. To earn cash to return, he began portray rooms and apparently died in a automotive accident a 12 months later within the USA. Šůra is performed by Michal Bednář, who maybe has a sixth sense for comparable forms of characters.
It’s by this determine that the manufacturing refers to a different current novelty at Zabradlí referred to as Contained in the Banana. At occasions, even melodramatically, it factors to the world of unsuccessful weirdos and pimps, whose want for musical success remained on the stage of a dream. Even God in Las Vegas works with sure dream passages, extra exactly pointing to the collapse of the American dream, which he additionally combines with western realities. However they attempt to match an excessive amount of into one form.
The ingenious scenography of Dragan Stojčevský, who historically works with layers, brings a framework and a sure order to the occasions, right here particularly with a system of curtains falling in several methods and floating into the rope. As at all times, essentially the most invaluable international foreign money are the actors, who’re in a position to give full-fledged performances even within the smallest house. For some, the disparity of tendencies and assigned roles simply freezes – for instance, with Václav Vašák, who fell to “black Peter”, i.e. the function of an actor of the Black Theater, by which the black-clad protagonists with masked faces will not be seen in opposition to the black background.
God in Las Vegas cycles inside himself means to the guests of the already well-known Na zabradlí Theater. He doesn’t introduce a brand new viewpoint into the raised subject, fairly he simply circles round it aesthetically.
Theatre
Petr Erbes and Boris Jedinák: God in Las Vegas
Directed by: Petr Erbes and Boris Jedinák
Theater Na zábradlí, Prague, premiere on June 5, subsequent reruns on June 20 and once more on September 12 and 19.