There is a chance that there will be plenty of seats for those willing to attend! The Divine Comedy Festival will show the play “Elizabeth Costello” for the third time on Sunday, December 15 at 6:00 PM in the Krakow TVP studio in Łęg. Tickets will go on sale on Friday at 12:00 PM.

Krzysztof Warlikowski’s latest production is coming to the Divine Comedy after successes at festivals in Avignon, Barcelona and Athens. Tickets for Elizabeth Costello are unavailable in Warsaw, the company will soon embark on the rest of its international tour, and other prestigious festivals are interested in the production. Most importantly, however, the staging enjoys a well-deserved reputation as the most important and probably the most personal staging of the outstanding director in years. Five actresses (Maja Komorowska, Maja Ostaszewska, Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak, Ewa Dałkowska, Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik) and Andrzej Chyra play the title character Elizabeth Costello, a constant character in the work of J.M. Coetzee, the alter ego of the South African Nobel Prize winner. Since (A)pollonia, the first performance produced under the banner of Nowy Teatr (at that time still without a permanent seat), Costello has been one of the heroines of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s theatre. So far, she has appeared in the background, for example in moving monologues about the extermination of animals, which the author compared to a new Holocaust.

Now, however, the creator has devoted an entire staging to her. Using means known from his previous works, but without raising semantic barriers in front of the audience, he tells about the most important topics of modern times – fear of old age, protection of animals and the excluded, crisis of morality. The monumental performance moves from a very serious tone to almost comedic sequences. Perhaps for the first time in Warlikowski’s theatre, there are almost genre fragments, which is due to Ewa Dałkowska, who shows the ironically smiling face of old age. The whole thing is crowned by a wonderful conversation between Maja Komorowska and Jacek Poniedziałek about the apocalypse of defenseless chickens. In the wide open eyes of the great actress, rarely present on stage, there is terror at the world that allows killing. This is perhaps the most important message of Warlikowski's performance, which becomes a fascinating imitation of life, and therefore not devoid of lighter tones.

Ticket sales start: Friday, November 22nd at 12:00 on bilety.boskakomedia.pl.

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Photo: Magda Hueckel