One Way Only

In the city’s underground, in her most hidden corners, dwell people who hope to run into us. Perhaps they think we will help them put together the puzzle of their scattered stories, perhaps they just need someone to listen to them, or, better yet, they want to invite us to join the game and take us through the labyrinth, it does not matter, we agree to follow them and take part in what they are going to show us. We choose a card from the deck they offered and follow the clues, from one shard of someone’s life to another, we dive into the darkness, not quite certain if we are the ones watching or the ones watched. The shadows are unclear, the meanings hazy. “It’s all good… I like to pry into other people’s lives too. That’s why we’re here, right?” one of the characters, our hosts, will say. The world of One Way Only has sunk into an elusive Kafkaesque mysteriousness, but at the same time it is a reflection of real events and the state of this horrifying, confusing, forewarning time in which we live. “You have warned him… You haven’t? You’ve decided to be a witness… But a witness cannot be a saint.”

Specific setting – the Grič Tunnel in downtown Zagreb – and epidemiological measures currently in forceallow for group admission of up to four persons at a time. The performances for each group begin at ten-minute intervals and the exact time for each admission is indicated on the ticket. The first group enters at 7 p.m. while the last at 8:30 p.m. The performance lasts about 40 minutes. Tickets available at box office or www.gavella.hr.

The author of the text and the director of One Way Only Enes Vejzović had decided to set up the audience in front of a great challenge. The spectators in the Grič tunnel enter in groups of three or four. At the beginning they are offered a shot of the strong alcoholic beverage rakija (a fruit spirit), after which in front of them appears the actor Amar Bukvić, as a sort of demon who lures them into a snare. The atmosphere is pregnant with anticipation, but sombre, quite ominous even… (...) The atmosphere of the performance as a whole is well struck, well gradated. The director Vejzović, with the help of this vast troupe of actors, sets to impress upon the passersby with the worst fears which we all harbour inside each and every one of us, with the situations of which we are all afraid, even if we don’t fully understand what is it that terrifies us so. (Bojana Radović, Večernji list)

Gavella has a sensation before us. A performance much akin to a video game in which you traverse a tunnel, pulled into the action and confronted with your personal demons. (...) One Way Only by the author and director Enes Vejzović is set up as a series of precisely thought up and designed scenes which you walk by as if in a theme park, with a large dose of interaction. In some of these scenes the actors will order you to sit down, in others they will offer you a deck of cards from which to select one card, and from others yet you’ll be wishing to scamper as soon as you can – not because of any discomfort, but because of the intensity of the performance before you. (...) The tunnel’s space is used brilliantly. Each scene is divided from the rest by way of black curtains, thus you cannot see what is before or behind you, working like sharp cuts in a film, giving the play an excellently defined rhythm. From one scene you suddenly come to the next, like a voyeur who silently observes, bent double with hands clasped behind one’s back, the lives, arguments and weddings of other folk. (Miran Pavić, Telegram)

An excellent play in the Grič tunnel, in the claustrophobic environment of a concrete womb. (...) ... Half-dark, drops of water slide down each side, a reverberating echo, heavy breath, and the actors, alone or in pairs, face-to-face with the spectators, far from the distant safety of an elevated stage, removed from any such helpful illusions, and yet condemned to elude the audience. (...) The actors are all, each and every one, an inspired crew. (Tomislav Čadež, Jutarnji list)

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