The Taming of the Shrew #ShakeTube

       From my early teens, this is my most favorite play by Shakespeare. First of all, this is a comedy, I do enjoy tragedies and they are too emotionally intense. Secondly, it is a quite straight forward play: it is easy to understand, easy to follow the plot and there is not much complicity of the characters. Altogether it is quite entertaining piece of work for me and I re-read it with pleasure.
      Frankly speaking Kathetina is one of my all-time favourite fictional characters. I just love this wild spirit that does not put up with the "accepted society norms". She is challenging everyone, even her family and thus put them to shame, but to me she is just trying to find her way, her place where she can calm her mind and spirit.
      Actually, the whole play can be seen as a proper feminists' hell: no rights for women, they are forced to marry, they can be treated by their husbands with all physical and psychological cruelty, they are technically a piece of property. And this is probably a true depiction of society at that time, but again Kathetina shows that not everything was so bad: her father is afraid of her and she can get whatever she wants, she refuses suitors (and here I am sure she refused not out of bad character but most probably that those suitors are inferior to her) unless she meets Petruchio, in whom she finds a challenge worth trying. Of course, this does not excuse the whole process of "taming" which is just pure cruelty.
     So, Kathetina has to adjust to survive and she has to scarify some stand points but I'd rather hope that her final dialogue is a disguise: Petruchio has a wife who “obeys” him in everything and he thinks he is the boss and finds pride in it, and she has a strong family and happy satisfied husband, probably in love with her, who, once confident in his success, will be far more generous and forgiving.
      Secondly, in the final monologue Kathetina shows how "tamed" she is generally.  The tone she is speaking with the widow and her sister - the sharpness and criticism did not go anywhere. I'd rather believe that Kathetina is still the same passionate, spirited and independent character with her point of view, she just rechannelled her energy and adjusted new requirements.
        She actually shows more sense than both other ladies, especially Bianca, whose "perfection" I cannot stand. This passive, submissive creature decided to rebel only once and against her husband when she is on the safe ground, so Kathetina in her sensible obedience is much more superior to her beautiful but rather shallow sister.
       So, as you guessed I just love Kathetina and call the play to myself not The Taming of the Shrew but The Taming of the Shrewd.

Theater: Magical Exercise

Author: Daniel Glattauer
Original title: Die Wunderübung
Theatrical title: Zázračné cvičení
Language: Czech
Director: Vilma Cibulková
Genres: Comedy
Cast: Vilma Cibulková, Stanislav Lehký, Rostislav Trtík
Time: 110m
Premiere: January 22, 2015
Theater: Branické divadlo, Prague

Summary:
It is a minimalistic play with three characters, a constantly fighting married couple and their couples therapist who resorts to unconventional methods to fix their relationship.

About the author:
     Daniel Glattauer is an Austrian writer and former journalist. He is best known for his dialogic epistolary novel Love Virtually (Gut gegen Nordwind) and its sequel Every Seventh Wave (Alle sieben Wellen).
      Glattauer's novels and plays are inspired by his personal experiences, dealing with situations and themes constructed from memories of his time as a journalist and his psycho social counselor training. Glattauer's work is characterized by humor and romantic relationships, catering to the masses and leading some critics to find fault with a lack of depth to his novels.

About the play:
Valentin (Stanislav Lehký) and Joana (Vilma Cibulková) are seeking the help of a couples therapist (Rostislav Trtík). Soon however, it is clear that regular treatment is not sufficient for this couple, so rooted their contempt for each other and so deep the estrangement are. After some vague attempts, which only made the couple furious, the therapist goes for a drastic exercise, which might not be successful at all. 

Themes:
Family problems and misunderstanding: This topic was pictured by the author with all the skills. The dialogs and monologues are so strong and passionate that it makes you sometimes think how two people can be driven to such misunderstanding and coldness in a marriage. A couple which is not able to sit together and talk calmly without shouting and accusing each other. Years together tought them to know soft spots and where it hurts the most. 

Final thoughts:
I must confess, that the play itself is very good and I really appreciate the dialogues, development of the characters and passion and temperature rising. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I thoroughly enjoyed the performance of the actors. It is not that the actors were not talented, but I had a slight feeling of artificial uneasiness in their presentation.

Theater: Run for Your Wife

Author: Ray Cooney
Original title: Run For Your Wife: A Comedy
Theatrical title: Běž za svou ženou
Language: Czech
Director: Václav Luks, Jan Nosek Novák
Genres: Comedy
Cast: Andrea Bulišová, Barbora Mottlová, Jiří Racek, Václav Čížkovský
Time: 110m
Theater: Branické divadlo, Prague

Summary:
       A taxi driver gets away with having two wives in different areas of London because of his irregular working schedule. Complication is piled upon complication as the cabby tries to keep his double life from exploding.

About the author:
      Raymond George Alfred Cooney (born 30 May 1932) is an English playwright and actor. His biggest success, Run for Your Wife, ran for nine years in London's West End and is its longest-running comedy. He has had 17 of his plays performed there.

About the play:
     A London taxi driver has two wives, not because he's any great lady-killer, but because he didn't want to upset the second woman who pursued him. It all works until he gets in a small accident, but then the police come around and he just can't get his story straight. That's pretty much the story on this funny little farce.

About the cast:
        Unfortunately, I must say that I enjoyed a performance of only 3 out of 8 actors. Those are Václav Čížkovský (playing Stanley Gardner), Jiří Racek (playing John Brown) and (playing Mary Brown)
       As though it was quite decent, the performance of Mr and Mrs Brown did not impress too much. I liked how they put emotions and they seemed quite natural, but still something was amiss, and that prevented me from enjoying their performance. Václav Čížkovský's execution, on the other hand, was impeccable. I was not able to recall any scene with him, where I would not enjoy his act, he skillfully masters his body and facial movement as well as his voice.
       Two of the actors: Barbora Mottlová (playing Barbara Brown) and Martin Hartl (playing a reporter) irritated me a great deal. Especially the 5 second appearance of a reporter was so badly done, that I am still annoyed. It is surprising that such a small role can influence the perception of the play all together.

Final thoughts:
     Overall, I find the comedy as a whole was a well done play that kept the attention of the audience at all times. I think it had great humor and it was nice humor with less of the door slamming and physical comedy than often goes with farce.
      I liked the way how the play escalated from an uncomfortable situation to a complete nonsense with so many people involved and with so many cooked up explanations that you try to do your best to not to mix anything and not to join in the common madness on the stage. One hilarious predicament after another

Theatre: Moment Of Weakness

Author: Donald Churchill
Original title: Moment Of Weakness
Theatrical title: Chvilková slabost
Language: Czech
Director: Petr Hruška
Genres: Comedy
Cast: Petra Špalková, David Matásek, Sandra Černodrinská
Time: 120m
Premiere: 23. 9. 2016
Theater: Divadlo v Rytířské, Prague

     This theatrical experience started quite funny. We arrived in time and went in to take our seats, when we found out that there were sitting two nicely dressed elderly ladies. The ladies provided their tickets, which clearly indicated our seats. I started to doubt my sanity and checked our tickets - the same seats. Overbooking can happen with airlines, but with the theater... So we rushed for the assistance of the theater staff. Three minutes later the stuff was checking ladies' and our tickets. The poor ladies have tickets for the same seats, same performance, same day of the weak, same date... but in the month time!! I felt so sorry for them, so much preparation and expectation and just to get to know that you are welcome to enjoy the play, but in a month from now. I think the stuff exchanged the ripped tickets and let them go. I felt a bit upset, I would try to find some spot for them, since they arrived and had the tickets, but what I know about theater policies))

Summary:
Audrey and Tony are a middle aged ex-couple meeting at their old weekend retreat to decide who gets what. Tony is re-married and expecting a baby with his new wife, while Audrey is planning to re-marry as well. Are these two exes really over each other?

About the author:
    Donald Churchill was an English actor and playwright. He appeared in many film and television productions over a 35-year period and wrote several TV scripts.
     His films included Barnacle Bill (1957), The Captain's Table (1959), Victim (1961), The Wild Affair (1964), Zeppelin (1971), The First Great Train Robbery (1979), Charlie Muffin (1979) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983) as Doctor Watson. On television he starred in Spooner's Patch (1980-1982) and appeared in Stanley and the Women (1991) and C.A.T.S. Eyes. His plays include Mixed Feelings, The Decorator, and Moments of Weakness.

About the play:
This is a comedy about modern marriage. Audrey and Tony are a middle aged ex-couple meeting at their old weekend retreat to decide who gets what. Tony is eager to get this matter cleared up. He has re-married and his new wife is pregnant. She has come along for the ride, but goes into labor and is rushed to the local hospital. Tony and Audrey are not able to say two words to each other without mutual accusations and abuse. But still he loves her and she still loves him. The question is will they ever admit this to each other and to themselves?

Themes:
Family love: It happens when two people just do not have what to say to each other after 20 years of marriage and fall apart. But sometimes they are just drifting apart my small misunderstanding, faults, impatience. They forget how to listen and feel compassion, they start demanding and take family well-being for granted, until the unexpected happens: one of them has enough and explodes and then the whole world falls apart, and not even the feeling of happiness, mutual love and blissful memories can repair the crack. Emotions are rising, passions are overwhelming, marriages are falling apart.
What can be more important then to avoid this situation in a loving family. To look after each other and listen to each other.

Final thoughts:
I truly enjoyed the play and the performance of the actors. I left with a happy feeling, not empty headed as usually after a comedy, but with the nice and enriching feeling of time spent with quality.

Theater: The Closet/KOndoMEDIE(CZ)

Author: Francis Veber
Original title: Le Placard
Director: Jiří Seydler
Genres: comedy
Cast: Jaromír Nosek, Jan Vlasák, Máša Málková, Petr Motloch, Martin Kraus, Bronislav Kotiš
Time: 120m
Premiere: 5. 3. 2016
Theater: Divadlo v Rytířské, Prague

Summary:
French comedy written by Francis Veber and directed by Jiří Seydler. It is about a man who pretends to be homosexual to keep his job, with absurd and unexpected consequences.

About the author:
     Francis Paul Veber is a French film director, screenwriter and producer, and playwright. He has written and directed both French and American films. Eight French-language films with which he has been involved, as either writer or director or both, have been remade as English-language Hollywood films.
   Many of his French comedies feature recurring types of characters, named François Pignon (a bungler) and François Perrin (a bully).

About the play:
The only information I could find that it was staged in 2014 in Théâtre des Nouveautés. So my wind guess (as the movie with the same name was shot in 200) that the play was written later after the film. But I could not find any confirmation about it, that might support this proposition.

Themes:
Anti-homosexual bigotry:
This play twiddles with human prejudice and hostility (and not only at working place). In the play cheap "queer" jokes and cheap "homophobe" jokes are avoided, even though attitudes about homosexuals is portrayed truly and bluntly. Through the funny dialogues is shown how easy it is to change the perception of a person and how gossips are pilling up based on "confirmed" information. And that most of the time it depends on how good a person can play his "social role".  Each of the characters is a study in itself. The homophobic character (Félix Santini) emerges as intriguing and sympathetic as he comes to realization about his homosexual misapprehension.
Political correctness:
This is not a play about being gay; that's only the gas that fuels that makes the action going. It is an observant, funny play about office politics and the way people's views of others can be distorted by labels. 

Final thoughts:
I wasn't expecting the lift that the performance gave me. It has a flimsy giddiness about it, lacking in most comedies about being gay or straight or anything else. But on the other hand, it was too light. After leaving a theater, though in a good mood, I could not remember any single joke or any scene that particularly touched me.

Theather: Sexual Perversity in Chicago

Author: David Mamet
Original title: Sexual Perversity in Chicago
Theatrical title: Sexuální perverze v Chicagu
Language: Czech 
Director: Ondřej Sokol
Genres: Comedy
Time: 120m
Cast: Jaromír Dulava, Ivana Chýlková, Marek Taclík, Lucie Pernetová
Premiere: 18.03.2004
Theater:  Činoherní klub, Prague 

Summary:
     The award-winning Sexual Perversity in Chicago is about two male office workers, Danny and Bernie of the early 1970's. Danny meets Deborah in a library and soon they are not only lovers but roommates, and their story quickly evolves into a modern romance in all its sticky details.

About the author: 

     David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. As a playwright, Mamet has won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). Mamet first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in 1976, The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. 

About the play: 

      Deborah and Dan are in love and are moving in together.  They spend with their best friend less and less time. They are so taken by their fondness that they pay no attention to Joan and Bernard's idle talks. Joan and Bernard are unpleasantly surprised by this change and wish everything came back to usual. After some time Deb and Dan's life together is shipwrecked due to small quarrels, misunderstandings and offenses. 

My thoughts: 

     This is the second time I saw the play, and again I found it as hilarious as dramatic. Mostly due to funny dialogues (50% with strong language), actors' performance and absurdity of situations you cannot stop laughing during the play, but among this laughter a drama of young couple comes through. People who are deeply in love are not able to cope with day-to-day life together. I believe this inability is connected with the environment they live in: constant idle talks about sexual achievement and variety build up unachievable expectation, which shadows the real life and real personalities, make them dull and unattractive. On the whole I love the play, even though it leaves a sad note afterwards.

Theather: The Urn on the Empty Stage

Author: Martin Čičvák
Original title: Urna na prázdném jevišti/Urna na prázdnom javisku
Director: Martin Čičvák
Genres: Drama, Comedy
Cast: Veronika Žilková, Lenka Skopalová, Ivana Uhlířová a Sára Venclovská
Time: 110 min
Premiere: 2 October 2016, Činoherní klub, Prague

Summary:
     Three actresses of different generations and the opera soprano gathered together on an empty stage with the black urn in the middle of it. In the urn are the ashes of the great theater director whom they came to pay a last tribune to.
     The story line develops around the attempt to fulfill the director’s last wish: to spread his ashes on the stage. The increasing uneasiness and inability to agree on anything reveals the mutual animosity of the former love rivals.

About the author: 

     Martin Čičvák is a theater director and playwright from Slovakia. After finishing studies in Brno JAMU (CZ) he studied in Darlington College of Arts in UK. Čičvák is actively working with Czech and Slovak theaters, and was working as well in Slovenia, Serbia and Great Britain. In 2000 he became on the of the main theater directors in Prague’s Činoherní klub theater. Apart from play he is also directing opera. 

About the play: 

      The great director loved his actresses and they loved him back. He meant a lot to them and they were thankful for their carriers. Together with him they would like to bury the memories of traumas, failures and mutual hatred. What unites those 4 women is the ambiguous relationship to the deceased: on the one hand they admire him and thankful for the successful roles and mutual work; on the other hand they could not stand his authoritative attitude, they reproach him for love affairs and not able to fulfill their acting ambitions.

      The play is full of the stereotypes of the acting profession: inability to suppress your passions, naivety and foolishness, certainty of your talent and rightness. The most funny and most difficult for me were the parts where the actresses cites roles form old performances twisting together the actresses and her personage’s character. It is quite fascinating to watch how they project their roles on their relationship with the director.  

Themes: 
Stereotyped vision on acting profession:
Frankly only people who are working in the theater know what is going on behind the curtain. So most of the time people just guess and try to predict behavior of actors. This play is full of general clichés like stupidity and shallowness of actors and their uncontrollable strive for success. On the other hand we see the drama’s going on with insults, frustration and humiliation with which actor need to cope with and continue to perform their best. 

Gender inequality:  

On the surface comes out such a problematic issue as gender inequality in acting profession. Women are taken into consideration as “muse” in the best scenario and in the worst as mere mistress. The main characters do not seem to fight against this inequality and prefer to take the role of the mistress in spite of the cost. 

Final thoughts: 

      I really liked the play, thought I met some challenges while watching it. Multiple references to theatrical pieces as Macbeth, Medea and other were not so easy to gasp with my level of language. But I was able to grasp the allusion and references.

      Another interesting thing about the play is its genre: It is not clear what it is drama with hints of humor, comedy with dramatic set up. The playwright leaves the spectator to decide himself, but adding an extra twist with detective line.

      The scenery is very simple, to be more exact they consists of only black urn. And I like it. Nothing distracts from brilliantly written dialog between actresses, how they are trying to find common solution, quarreling, getting hysterical, accusing each other and then uniting in mutual hatred towards deceased. The dialogs are full of black humor and exaggerations.

Theather: The Deep Blue Sea

Autour: Terence Rattigan
Original title: The Deep Blue Sea
Director: Carrie Cracknell
Genres: Drama
Cast: Hellen McCrory (Hester Collyer), Tom Burke (Freddie Page), Nick Fletcher (Mr. Miller)
Time: 120 min
Premiere: 8.06.2016, Lyttelton Theater: National Theater, London 

Summary:
1952, East London. The play starts when Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours after a failed attempt to commit suicide by gassing herself. Little by little details of her prior life with a husband William Collyer, whom she left for a former RAF pilot Freddie Page start to surface. Their relationship was quite passionate and physical, but quickly come to the point of desperation and dissatisfaction. The aftershock of her suicide attempt ruins the remains of this relationship. By the end of the day Hester is left alone with the question: to live or not to live? She chooses to live, but not without the help of an ex-doctor, another resident of the tenement house, Mr. Miller.

About the author:
Ragtigan was born in 1911. He left university in 1934 to dedicate his time to playwriting.  He was one of England's most popular mid-twentieth century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background. He is known for such works as The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954) and many others.  The plays whiten during WW2 turned him into a celebrity. After the war his plays started to bear more autobiographic character.

About the play:
Quite interesting is how the play was conceived. Rattigan was gay with numerous lovers, but no long-term partners. In 1939 he met an actor Keneth Morgan with whom he had a relationship. He swamped Keneth his lover with gifts, emotions and money. Morgan however hardly tolerated Rattigan's dominance and in 1949 left dramatist and moved in with another man Alec Ross. Rattigan was expecting that his lover would return to him and comfort he provided. However, in April 1949 Morgan died by gas self-intoxication after a quarrel with his new friend.
This tragedy brought the idea of a new play, which starts with the scene of a body lying in from of the gas fireplace. The next 3 years he worked on it. In the first version of "The Deep Blue Sea" the story of the unhappy relation between the two men took place, but in the 50s, when homosexuality was taken as "social and moral problem similar to heroin addiction", this kind of play would never be staged. The picture of the unhappy woman living with a lover was much more attractive. Now Hester is considered one of the most important theater female figures, which proves the timelessness of Rattigan's plays, in which he describes deep feelings about the unbalanced relationship.

About the cast:
Helen McCrory. This is the second time I saw Helen on the stage, and again she performed in a play directed by Carrie Cracknell, and again she had deeply disturbed and unhappy character person. But what a performance! She is so talented that she can show the transformation from quiet happiness to aggressive insanity in seconds. Her face is so vivid and emotional expressions are so meticulously elaborated that you can see she is in a different league from everyone else on stage.

Themes:
Unequal love: Hester falls in love with Freddie Page. For this passionate obsession she leaves her successful husband, friends and environment she used to and finds herself in need, humiliation and long-termed depression. Freddie is not the type of a man, who can answer her passion and this understanding drains her strength pushing her to a suicide. Freddie is also not the villain here, he is trying to give as much as he can, but he just does not feel that kind of love towards Hester.
Broken lives: We find here 3 victims of the society in the 50s. First is eventually Hester, who is “living in sin” with her lover, and who left her prosperous husband for a shameful connection. The only way for her to regain her place in the society is to return to her husband apologetically and be forgiven.
Another victim is Freddie, a former RAF pilot, who cannot find his place in the world after the war. He is too old for flying and besides, he drinks a lot, there is no other occupation for him; he lost his path and cannot adjust to the contemporary life.
And the final victim is the sad, shambling figure of Mr. Miller. He is a tenant and former doctor who has been sent to prison for unknown to us crime. Mr. Miller assists Hester during her first attempt and prevents the second by talking her out of it with such desperation, sadness and unhappiness in his voice that even without knowing exactly why he was sent to jail the auditorium can feel that a lot of wrong has been done to this character.

Final thoughts:
Without doubts Terence Rattigan managed to capture the depth of despair in what we found the main character Hester. Together with a brilliant performance of Helen McCrory and director Carrie Cracknell this play shows the complexity of unbalanced relationship, the dependence of a woman on a toxic love without being able to get anything from it. Sure, the character is a victim of her own decisions, but either small or big decisions can change our lives so drastically, that a person will be only one step away from falling into the deep blue sea.

Theather: Dance Show in Hellerau

http://www.divadloarcha.cz/cz/

Title: One Flat Thing, Reproduced

Choreograph: William Forsythe

Music: Thom Willems

Costumes:  Stephen Gallowat

Premiere: 2.02.2000, Frankfurt Ballet, Bockenheimer Deport, 

Frankfurt on the Main

-----

http://www.divadloarcha.cz/cz/

           

     Title: Lux Tenebris                            
   Choreograph: Rafeal Bonachela        
Music: Nick Wales                            
Costumes: Aleisa Jelbart                  
                         Premiere: 26.02.2016, Sydney Dance Company,
                   Roslyn Packer Therather Walsh Bay, Sydney

        I am not a big fan of contemporary art, especially in theater. It does not mean that I am totally orthodox about new ideas, not at all. I am open to all kinds of experiments, but sometimes the performance just leaves me unmoved. Which does not mean it did not affect me; it does leave me in either positive or rather puzzled mood. Let's take ballet as an example. The change in setting and the dance routine is more than welcome as soon as the story continues to be logical and consistent. Put Romeo and Juliet in Americas 40s gangster years, why not? Retell the Snow White story by putting dancers in modern clothes and let them dance street dance – can be challenging, but still good as soon as the story line is impacted.

     But what to do with contemporary dance which does not have story line? It does have an idea which is sometimes difficult to grasp. Difficult to stay focused on any idea when a bunch of naked dances with epileptic abrupt movements change their position on stage with a one-note musical accompaniment.

         Similar happened to me again this September. My friend invited me to a dance show in Dresden. She told me this is a good opportunity not only enjoy the show, but to see the historical building Hellerau which used to be the center of contemporary expressive dance in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century.

The central building in Hellerau

So for a ridiculous sum of money the bus picked us up in the Prague center and brought us to the Hellerau quarter. We had a brief tour about the history of the "garden city". The lady-guide concentrated a great deal on the communist past of the building, when it was used as barracks for the soviet army on the Western front were left untouched on the walls of the Festspielhaus (building with the main stage). To many it can seem too ugly and out of place, but my impression was quite agreeable. It seems like a colour splash on boring white walls with historical message: a piece of conceptual art within modern and contemporaneity environment.

The Lonesome West is so lonely

The Lonesome West

Author:  Martin McDonagh                     
Pages: 60
Edition Language: English
Series: The Leenane Trilogy #2
Genres: drama, comedy, play
Goodreads 

Theater:
The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh, directed by Ondřej Sokol. With Jaromír Dulava (Coleman Connor), Sandra Černodrinská (Girleen Kelleherova), Ondřej Sokol (Father Welsh).  Činoherní klub

Author:
      Мартин Макдонах - cовременный ирландский драматург, сценарист и кинорежиссёр
Мартин МакДонах родился в Лондоне в 1970 году. Брат Мартина, Джон, пытался стать писателем. Эти попытки заставили Мартина попробовать писать самому. В 1997 году пришёл успех: пьеса «Красавица из Линэна», написанная годом ранее за восемь дней, была поставлена на Бродвее и, помимо известности, принесла автору театральные премии «Evening Standard» и «Тони».

 Play:
      «Сиротливый Запад» (Osiřelý západ) — пьеса идущая с 2002 в театре Cinoherní klub жестокая и мрачная комедия. История двух братьев, эмоционально обделённых и морально незрелых держится на бессмысленных взаимных оскорблениях и отборной брани. Ни Вэлин, ни Коулмэн не способны сделать уступки и глухи к чувствам друг друга. Священник отец Уэлш делает многочисленные безрезультатные попытки примирить братьев и заставить их прийти к взаимопониманию. Однако вражда берет свое начало в детстве и братья хорошо оточили наиболее болезненные приёмы. Коулмен и Вэлин чаще всего просто омерзительны в своей мелочности, порой смешны, но иногда проступает какая-то человеческая жалость к ним. Перипетии их взаимоотношений, непримиримость характеров - все неизбежно тащит героев к пропасти, подталкивает к трагическому финалу.
      Роль отца Уэлша - пожалуй, самая трагическая в пьесе. Священник с затянувшимся кризисом веры, страдающий алкоголизмом, кончает жизнь самоубийством, закладывая свою душу ради озлобленных и жестоких братьев Конноров, стремительно ломающих друг другу жизнь. Нелегко преодолеть отчуждение, замешанное на годах непонимания, тяжёлом быте, пустых обидах и убийстве, но всё-таки они предпринимают попытку восстановить отношения - ведь иначе душа отца Уэлша будет гореть в аду.
      Пьеса захватывает с самой первой сцены. Забавно поставленные драки, грубость и жестокость людей сочетается с острой комедийностью, заставляя зрителей пребывать в экстремальных состояниях от острой жалости до искреннего негодования.

Quotes:

Вэлин: Ты слышал новость?
Коулмэн: Да. Это ужасно, не так ли?
Вэлин: Это позор. Это полный позор и больше ничего. Нельзя исключить из соревнований целую девичью футбольную команду.
Коулмэн: Во всяком случае, не в долбаном полуфинале.
Вэлин: Верно, никогда. Если ты должен удалить игроков — удаляй, но по одному за их индивидуальные нарушения. Ты не должен выбрасывать всех их оптом да ещё через семь минут после начала матча, так что они плача пошли домой к своим мамочкам.
Коулмэн: Команда из Святой Джозэфины прошла только через выход из состязаний нашей команды и только поэтому. Если у них было бы хоть какое-то понятие о чести, они отказались бы от их места в финале и отдали бы его нам.
Вэлин: Я надеюсь, они проиграют в финале.
Коулмэн: Я тоже надеюсь, что они проиграют в финале. Тем более теперь, когда ихний вратарь в коме они обязательно проиграют.
Вэлин: Нет, их вратарь уже давно вышла из своей комы. Она сейчас на интенсивной терапии.
Коулмэн: Так она притворялась? Нас исключили из всех соревнований вообще без всякой причины? Я надеюсь, она опять впадёт в свою кому и сдохнет.
Вэлин: Точно так. Я надеюсь, что она опять впадёт в свою кому и сдохнет. (Пауза). Посмотри-ка на нас — мы согласны.

 

Author:
      Martin McDonagh is a London-born Irish playwright whose first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane was the 1996 winner of the George Devine Award. It also won the Writer's Guild Award for Best Fringe Play and the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Newcomer. The play was nominated for six Tony awards, of which it won four, and the Laurence Olivier Award.

Play:
      "The Lonesome West" is a cruel and dark comedy staged in Cinoherní klub from 2002. The story of emotionally poor and morally handicapped two brothers is based on long trail of mutual crimes between them and abusive words. Either Coleman or Valene is able to yield and is deaf to each other's feelings.
      The priest Father Welsh is making multiple fruitless attempts to bring the brothers together. But the grudge is deep rooted in childhood and they are very efficient in hurting each other. Coleman and Valene are more often repulsive in their pettiness, sometimes are funny, but at times simple human sympathy towards them is appearing. Drunkenness, hopelessness and petty vindictiveness prevail in their lives and these all drag them to a downfall, push them to a tragic end.
      Father Welsh character is probably the most tragic figure in the play. The young priest in faith crisis suffering from drinking problems drowns himself and puts his soul in the hands of bitter and hard-hearted brothers who are destroying their lives rapidly. It is difficult to overcome alienation stirred on years of misunderstanding, hard living, vain insults and murder, but they are trying to bring themselves together, otherwise Father Welsh’s soul will burn in hell for eternity.
      The play captures you from the firth scene.  Funny staged fights, brutality and cruelty of characters are nicely blended with comedial touches, making theater-goers experience extreme emotions from acute compassion to sincere indignation.

Quotes:

Valene:     Did you hear the news?
Coleman:  I did. Isn’t it awful.
Valene:    It’s a disgrace. It’s an outright disgrace, and nothing but. You can’t go sending off
an entire girl’s football team, sure.
Coleman: Not in a semi-fecking-final anyways.
Valene:     Not at any time, sure. If you have to send people off you send them off one at a time, for their individual offences. You don’t go slinging the lot of them off wholesale, and only seven minutes in, so they go crying home to their mammys.
Coleman: St Josephine’s have only got through by default, and nothing but default. If they had any honour they’d not take their place in the final at all and be giving it to us.
Valene: I hope they lose the final.
Coleman: The same as that, I hope they lose the final. Sure, with their goalie in a coma they’re bound to.
Valene: No, their goalie came out of her coma a while ago there. Intensive care is all she’s in now. 
Coleman: She was fecking feigning? Getting us expelled from all competitions for no reason at all.  I hope she lapses into her coma and dies.
Valene: The same as that. I hope she lapses into her coma and dies. Look at us, we’re in agreement.

Rating 

     7/10