2024-03-23 08:32:17
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol’s The Marriage returned to the repertoire of the National Theater in Brno after three decades. Director Štěpán Pácl conceived the new production as a comedy about how difficult it is to make a decision and then stick to it. The premieres at the Mahen Theater take place this Friday, March 22 and Saturday, March 23, with the next reruns on March 28 and April 2.
According to the director Pácl, the playwright Gogol himself, who lived from 1809 to 1852, was very indecisive. “He wrote a play about the fact that a person would prefer someone else to make decisions for him. And about the tragic and comic consequences of such foreign decision-making,” says Pácl.
The hero of Marriage is the government council of Podkolesin, who thinks about marital status. But the biggest obstacle is not Agatha’s suitors, whom he has been eyeing, but himself and his inability to make up his mind. The hero will be helped by his friend Kočkarev, while Agáta has her skilled matchmaker Tekla.
In Pácl’s conception, both main characters are people of mature age, experienced, but also tested by life and fate. They are played by Tereza Groszmannová and Bedřich Výtisk in Brno. “The provocative cast of the main characters promises great fun and a great acting concert,” announces the director.
Tomáš Šulaj will play the role of Podkolesin’s friend Kočkarev, who, according to Pácl, is ideal for such a figure thanks to his temperament. Agáta’s other suitors will be portrayed by Ivan Dejmal, Petr Bláha and Michal Bumbálek.
The Marriage is one of Gogol’s most distinctive comedies. In addition to the fact that it is still performed by drama companies, there is also an operatic adaptation by the composer Bohuslav Martinů from 1952.
“Gogol elevates the comedy of types with a deeper rendering of the characters and an understanding of the depicted people, just as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or Chekhov later improved the typology of the Russian person. Just like the aforementioned classics, Gogol captured the universally human in types,” state the creators of the new production, according to whom the Podkolesins are , Kočkarevová and Tekla “all around us, even if we are not in the 19th century or in a small Russian town”.
A new translation by Zuzana Sílova and Jaroslav Vostrý was created for the Brno drama. “Gogol is a genius. Thanks to his special view of the world and thanks to his talent, he sees and shows us things that we would otherwise never know about a person,” adds Vostrý.