Another success of Boris Liješević: A brilliantly read novel

The play "Quiet Days in the Mixing Part", directed by Boris Liješević at the Zagreb Youth Theater based on the novel by the Norwegian writer Erlend Lu, delighted the Zagreb theater audience at the premiere held on December 21.

The main roles in this comedy are played by Zoran Ćubrilo and Katarina Bistrović Darvaš, and the ensemble of the play also includes Milivoj Beader, Marica Vidušić, Hrvojka Begović, Vedran Živolić, Urša Raukar, Damir Šaban, Suzana Nikolić, Nađa Perišić Radović, Danijel Ljuboja, Dora Polić Vitez, Petar Leventić, Lucija Šerbedžija and Edvin Liverić. Jelena Kovačić did the dramaturgical adaptation, Branko Hojnik designed the scenography, Doris Kristić was the costume designer, and Aleksandar Kostić was the composer.

According to theater critic Bojana Radović (Večernji list), Liješević did a great ensemble performance and provided an opportunity to prove himself as an actor to everyone who wanted to work on this text.

"He builds the story by emphasizing the lostness of man in today's world, insisting on the emotional states of all the actors, even if they are the sexual organ of the main character or his wife's toothbrush. The final picture is a circle, accurately and precisely painted, a disappointing, but also a truly devastating circle: at the beginning and at the end of the story, everything is the same - the family, its members, their paranoias and imaginations. The impression is that the director, searching for a new theater form, but also a different way of working, not only read the novel brilliantly, on the adaptation and dramaturgical work of which Jelena Kovačić also worked, but also psychologically unmistakably entered into the reactions of his actors", wrote Radović.

Mixing part is a place in Bavaria where the family from the story goes on holidays, and it got its name from the translation of the German original through Google translator.

"In the lives of those heroes, Mixing Part becomes a metaphor for alienation, distance, the space of the subconscious, repressed," director Liješević said about the play. Precisely this suppression, how everyday life and life teach us to suppress certain contents, is the topic that he personally considers the most important among the series of dominant themes of the play, he added.

"Suppression is a possibly undesirable defense mechanism that, if there is no valve, turns into aggression and violence, and even into fascism, which the play also talks about in a way," Liješević said.