On the stage in Stari Bar last night, this year's theatrical production of the Bar Annals premiered, the play "Of Mice and Men" directed by Dino Mustafić, a co-production of the Annals and the Podgorica City Theater.
The renowned Bosnian-Herzegovinian director justified his reputation and the compliments that follow him with his vision of the famous short novel by the American Nobel laureate John Steinbeck. With his directorial approach, he gave this theatrical "loser's blues" multi-layeredness and the possibility of a wide interpretation, both in the context of the time when the action takes place - the era of the American Great Depression, the thirties of the last century - and in the light of the current moment (not only) in the USA, when a word about the eternal search for a dream.
The play is a classic slowburner, gently introducing the audience to the characters' characters, weaving the drama gradually, until the burst of illusion in the final scene. Mustafić had undisguised sympathy for the pauperized "heroes" of the work, those American "earthly slaves and slaves who are dying of hunger", wage earners who earn a crust of bread with hard physical labor on farms and dream with open eyes of a better life and their own piece of land under the sky.
A relatively static literary template, with a good dramaturgical intervention by Stella Mišković, was "broken" with a mise-en-scène - the acting ensemble conquered every part of the ambient Starobar scene, and with songs that were the "cloak" of the piece with text and music.
As he told "Vijesta" after giving a gift to the audience, Mustafić made very few corrections in the text itself, changing only the female character more significantly. The actors were rewarded for their efforts with several minutes of applause from the audience at the premiere, especially Miloš Pejović for the role of Leni, and it is to be expected that they will be even better and more relaxed in the following performances.
"We wanted to preserve all the thematic lines of the work - from social justice, friendship, the fight for freedom - in our staging, to preserve the apotheosis of friendship, philanthropy, tenderness, care that George and Leni, the main characters, show to each other. On the other hand, the social component was very important to us, because all the characters somehow create an atmosphere of a vague, unspoken dream that somewhere there is a different, better world, much more just than the one they live in. That existential anxiety, that pain, depression, loneliness and silence that overwhelms them and breaks their spine were important to us as the emotional and conceptual hubs of the play," said Mustafić, among other things, to journalists after the premiere.
Playwright Stela Mišković said that Steinbeck's text in itself carries a certain amount of modernity "and it is more a question of our reading, than dramaturgical interventions".
"What was necessary to do in relation to Steinbeck was to displace the only female character from misogyny, we gave her the name and dreams to which she is entitled. Our goal was, in every sense, that no character was just a mere function, but rounded from beginning to end," Mišković said.
In the novel and on stage, Leni is a physically extremely strong man with developmental disabilities, in whose interpretation Pejović accentuated the side of almost childlike innocence.
"We started from the point that he has the consciousness of a child in the body of a strong man with no control over his actions. With Leni, everything is clear and stated, what was more difficult to find was his enthusiasm, which I found in his acceptance of everyone," said Pejović.
Mišo Obradović played the role of Leni's friend-guardian Džorž, and in addition to them, Branko and Pavle Ilić, Dejan Đonović, Marija Đurić, Božidar Zuber and Vule Marković also play in the play. The scenography was done by Smiljka Šeparović Radonjić, the costume design by Lina Leković, and the music composed by Tamara Obrovac. The first replay was played last night, the new one tonight in the Old Town from 21.30:6 p.m., and the next one on August XNUMX.
Bonus video:
