Review: OFF-PÓŁNOCNA FESTIVAL at Lodz Musical Theater

As we all know, the American and Polish approaches to creating a musical are worlds apart. I can say that one follows a map, the other chases a hallucination. The first is built on popularity - and its succes is answer to a question: does the audience like it? Love it? Here, it's different. The audience is the last piece of the puzzle, and I hate to admit that sometimes it's painfully obvious that a piece was made not for the public, but by a director (for a director). So whenever there's a chance to see new musical work and watch how people react to it - I'm in.

Festivals have a tough task. One performance, on an unfamiliar stage, with a different audience, different acoustics, and all that jazz. And yes, at times it felt like sand in the gears. Nevertheless, I admire the bravery of looking for new forms, new languages, new ways of making art. That courage is the very essence of creation. And I loved this year's theme: Icons Off the Pedestal.

I saw three pieces: Ina. You Prefer Me When I Smile, The Trial, and Amadeus. There weren't many pedestals - that's for sure. But there was plenty of passion instead.

The first piece, from Gdynia's Musical Theatre, tells the story of Ina Benita. You don't know her? No wonder. Her own children didn't know her - not fully, anyway. After she moved to the United States, she never revealed to anyone that she had been a movie star before WWII. Thanks to the internet, her secret surfaced years after her death, surprising even her descendants. It's a beautiful, quietly devastating story. And the two Kurdej sisters — Katarzyna and Barbara - clearly fell for it completely. You can see the spark in their eyes when they talk about it. The show itself didn't knock me off my feet, but the passion did.

The Trail, from Kraków's Bagatela, was also driven by passion - and has been developing for years, which is rare enough in Poland to deserve applause on its own. But I couldn't find Kafka in it, and I was looking very hard. What I found instead was something closer to Gulliver lost in Lynch's incomprehensible, freaky universe — transferred, somehow, to Japan. Intriguing, yes. Kafka, no.

I had hoped Amadeus - by Teatr Nowy Proxima - would be funny, or at least deeply musical (at least that was my fantasy). It was neither. It was modern and earnest, which isn't a crime, but unfortunate sound problems meant the core of the play simply faded away - too vague to land as comedy, too thin to stand as a monument. It felt too undefined to fully engage - either emotionally or intellectually.

And yet - this is exactly the role of theatre. We love it because it is not a fixed form. It responds, shifts, and tests its own limits. Not everything works, but the act of searching itself has value.

So here's to searching. Because the greatest, most creative things are born on hidden roads. Thank you for letting me be part of it.

fot. Gdynia’s Theatre, Photo Ballet, Michał Matuszak

Otrzymuj wiadomości z Broadwayu na WhatsAppie

Otrzymuj najnowsze aktualności, wiadomości i ekskluzywne treści bezpośrednio w aplikacji.