Messrs. Glembay

In the last few years our theatre’s audience was only able to see Miroslav Krleža’s play Messrs. Glembay (which is the opening to a set of three interconnected plays) only during the theatre’s festival ‘Gavelline večeri’ (Gavella’s Evenings), or here and there in Zagreb, Belgrade, Ljubljana… On various occasions this particular troupe, simply because Messrs. Glembay lends itself to many a character interpretation as well as many an individual perspective. The last, and until now only stage production of this play in the Gavella Theatre was in 1984 and it remained on stage until 1991, having been performed 160 times. These new Messrs. Glembay are directed by Miroslav Međimorec, a long-time friend of the theatre who, in 1987, directed the third part of this chain of Krleža’s plays, Leda. A play like this new one about the collapse of an apparently mighty family, traumatised by past, unresolved problems internal to it functioning brings onto the stage a row of layered, well-written conflicts, whose interpreters confront their adopted stances to one another, as if exchanging knocks and punches until total exhaustion. “The many-layered fabric of this great dramatic work unites, at once, such topics as social injustice, the misuse of one’s material wealth, irresponsibility, perversity coupled with degeneration, hypertrophied sensibility, an erotic, aesthetic and plainly artistic alienation from one’s own milieu and a sterile, moral estrangement...” - that is how the Krleža Encyclopedia, the Krležiana, reminds us of the significance of this work - alongside the author’s most often-staged play, the second of the aforementioned Glembay trilogy, In Agony (U agoniji).

“The director has decided upon a purely classical approach, in an above all clean stage design by Zlatko Kauzlarić Atač, with excellent music by Matej Meštrović alongside Marita Ćopo’s sumptuous costume design. (...) We have witnessed an excellent production of the Messrs. Glembay, classical and logical, anchored first and foremost by an excellent actors’ performance...” (Bojana Radović, Večernji list)

“The whole rests on the actors who are, without exception, as they say, up to the task. (...) Stazić brilliantly removed the dangerously pathetic element within the old swindler, his Glembay is far from being an improbable sight. (...) Amar Bukvić is simply an excellent Leone. Without a doubt this is his best roles in the Gavella Theatre so far. (...) Nataša Janjić in the role of the Baroness Castelli, first in red, then in black attire, performed her character playfully and charmingly, convincingly. One cannot ‘mature’ in that role. You either are in the role or you aren’t. Her actorial intelligence is equal to her erotic intelligence as contained within the character of the Baroness, thus her performance is both attractive and unobtrusive. (...) Dijana Vidušin likewise gave us an excellent, natural I would add, Sister Angelika… (...) Darko Milas performed the role of Fabriczy-Glembay unobtrusively as well, steadily too, managing to mask behind a restrained politeness a deep-seated ruggedness and vulgarity. Ozren Grabarić is quite witty as Puba, a lawyer, a limb of the law with an excess of energy, a man cynical in his field of work, focused and uninterrupted. Sven Medvešek as Dr Altmann is brilliant as well, he manages to appear as if an aged junkie and is thus the most sombre, darkest character on stage. Hrvoje Klobučar succeeded in his role as the priest Silberbrandt, a fairly contemporary phenomenon, not even remotely pious, more arrogant and mechanical in his profession in which, moreover, he doesn’t even truly believe.” (Tomislav Čadež, Jutarnji list)

“... everything in this production is more than thought-out, carefully studied, thus Bukvić’s Leone as well. Composed, calm, sarcastic, firm in his task not to allow his own degradation and censorship, at times marked by the yelping laughter of a social hyena at the price of his own hypocrisy, but also in many a dramatic situation emotionally layered, profoundly present on stage and in a particular way ‘shielded’ from the surrounding violence by way of his mocking, derisory intelligence. (...) Within the context of the economic violence in which he develops as a person, Leone is by no means a ‘paranoid’ (which is how the rest of the family labels and humiliates him), nor is he a ‘psychotic’ (as modern medicine might christen him), but is instead the voice of an oppressed and repeatedly degraded humanity. The voice of a dissident, not that of a sick man. Although the local, modern psychiatry doesn’t label him as such, at least the theatre’s stage seems to imply it.” (Nataša Govedić, Novi list)

“Amar Bukvić has performed in a first-rate actorial role as Leone Glembay...” (Nina Ožegović, T-portal)