I insisted on checking whether the performance I recommended to some friends as a must see, one of Bucharest's best, still meets and after eight - nine years from the premiere the same qualities. And, well, yes, the black, acid charm of Werner Schwab’s First Ladies, directed by Sorin Militaru, at the Odeon Theatre, remained intact after so much time.
Author of Faeces Dramas, the Austrian Werner Schwab (1958-1994), playwright, woodcutter and contemporary sculptor along with the Actionism (developed in the same cultural background), drunk to death - literally - on New Year's Day in 1994, blaspheming over and over all traditional values. Bigotry, the saint papal chair, human kindness, state authority, love, filial gratitude are all fouled in Schwab's anarchic degradation. His black comedy violently mocks the religious discourse, the piety of all good old women, but with a weak stomach, without occupation or education, whose vision of life is made of extreme platitudes like “Peace is the meaning of life and life is the meaning of humanity” or “Joy is the pollen of the soul, when kept decent”. And so on... since their nonsense is infinite and Schwab’s humour is roaring in this play about the hypocrisy and foulness of the world.
Three simple minded old women consuming their daily meeting. Their views on art and movies seen on TV, the crossed “three hands” erotic fantasy, quarrels and the sinister end of the reverie by Mariedl's prediction of misfortunes, announcing heinous adversities, for which inspiration she will pay in death, floods the play in humour. The situations in which humanity is unravelled layer by layer through language with distortions typical of Werner Schwab, with syntactic irresistible displacements: “You know, you did very well to purchase a fur and a television set. This way pleasure will come to your home too. It was time you gave yourself to life, Erna, for life to enjoy you.”
Behind such language matches shines gloomy the misanthropy of the Austrian, echoed by the two 40 years old offsprings of the old ladies, boycotting their mothers by not going to conceive. The dispute between the generations is so destroying it ends in atrocious blood shed. There’s no gratitude for the ones who brought them into this friendly world. Neither with Hannelore, regularly raped by her father under maternal eyes, nor with Hermann, who is sick with everybody, beginning with himself, for which reason he gets drunk every day.
The direction of Sorin Militaru produces three grand actor recitals: Coca Bloos, Emilia Dobrin, Dorina Lazar. Moreover, it preserves a dry tone, killing in the bud any glimpse of hope. Small gestures and situations colour the performance which, anyway, lacks anything but colour, in moments like the one in which the two old women gradually find are all stratagems to avoid touching their friend who works as a toilet cleaner. Or the delightful scene in which the women drink wine and as Mariedl's cup becomes attached to the table, she calmly and confidently dips one finger after another in the cup and licks it.
Underground currents of derision “systematically” destroy any value recognized by society. In Schwab's play, fragmentation takes place, first of all, with the support of the well-defined typology that includes the three female characters. Stingy and coyly Erna, the cleaning lady who is disgusted by discussion on physiology and on who’s opinion “sexual life was always harmful for humans”, assiduously improves her art of saving, applied even on toilet paper. The look overwhelmed by transfiguration worn by Emilia Dobrin as Erna, when she speaks about God or her butcher lover, a bigot like herself, is hilariously counterbalanced by the gestures of the woman who has been penny-pinching all her life. In the settled company, in which saving is a valuable virtue, Erna’s position is equal to collecting a fur from the garbage and exulting at purchasing a second-hand television set. In one of her greatest roles, Emilia Dobrin, a unique actress in our entire theatre, creates a symphony of low voices in the passage from the Christian attitude to human cruelty.
Grete is a plump full of charm, amateur of sensual pleasures, with primitive erotic reveries that she occasionally compensates with a good meal. Dorina Lazar, playing here an overweight sex-bomb, an explosion of vitality, funnier as her exuberance regularly vanishes into naps, composes a human character through weakness and loneliness alleviated only by her pet dog. The actress who can turn any housewife into a rare piece on stage seduces through Greta’s lust for life even in her wheelchair, of which she gets up to sing and dance on heels that no longer listen to her.
Everybody calls expert Mariedl who also “does it” without (gloves) to unclog their toilets. Mariedl, who has always been alone, brings her sacrifice to Jesus whenever she sticks her hand into shit. Society spoils her for her unbeatable position and the trickster-tender priest hides his gifts, a goulash tin, one beer and a French perfume, in three clogged toilets. Schwab's lucidity and black humour are consistent even in such romatic situations or in the characteriological surprise in the end: even the best and most human of the old ladies, who suffers when the others are fighting, nests destructive evil. It is precisely Mariedl the one who will cruelly destroy the compensating fantasies of her friends. Coca Bloos, shy, humble, hilarious, generous and imbued with divine grace, in one of her wonderful roles, brings up the maximum of effects in her brain-dead character, but with the soul high to heaven.
Watching this shower of ash that destroys everything recognized in society as value may amount only to purification by blood and, in the case of the First Ladies, with shit, before a new settlement of rational or aesthetic grounds. An intellectual experience that every viewer must live from time to time. It’s good for sanity. Enjoy!
