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"Great John Barrymore", the opening play, set the tone with a
portrait of the legendary American Shakespearean actor, rueing
that he could not appreciate his own performance as Hamlet.
“One of my greatest regrets will always be that I couldn’t sit
in the audience and watch me perform,” Barrymore, played by
Jerzy Trela, says in the play presented by Krakow's STU Theater
on July 31.
The 10-day festival featuring presentations in theaters and on
the streets of Gdansk ends on August 9.
For festival director Jerzy Limon, approaching the role of
Hamlet through the thoughts of an actor who played him was in
keeping with the experimental nature of European theater today.
It's also in line with the festival, known in Polish as the "Festiwal
Szekspirowski", which mixes traditional presentations of
Shakespeare plays in English with experimental modern versions,
renditions in other languages such as Polish and Russian, and
works inspired by the Bard's prolific output.
Traditional productions of Shakespeare are “very hard to find,
especially in Poland or Germany”, Limon said.
“There is of course a nostalgia from the spectators’ side to
plays that have a beginning, middle and end ... for coherence of
plot, convincing characters, all these notions that have been
rejected by very recent theater.”
In its opening days, the festival presented a Romanian version
of “Hamlet” while Copenhagen’s Theater Republique and the
British trio The Tiger Lillies jointly presented a version of
the play mixing drama, dance and acrobatic theater with
grotesque songs.
"When I heard that they produced 'Hamlet', I said to myself,
'Wow, we must have it',” Limon said.
Other experimental works include jazz interpretations of
Shakespeare’s sonnets by Portuguese singer Maria Joao and her
electronic OGRE group. “It’s an adventure,” she said of their
project.
Also in the mix are a Polish “King Lear”, a Russian-Danish
“Macbeth” and a Georgian “Julius Caesar”, as well as offerings
in a "ShakespeareOFF" stream including one-man shows, movies and
TV series.
(Editing by Michael Roddy and Tom Heneghan)
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