The Wedding: a hysterically endured celebration

The Wedding, based on the one-act play A Respectable Wedding by Bertolt Brecht, has been produced together with the young actors, former students of Koršunovas, who have only recently completed their Bachelor’s studies at the Lithuanian Academy of Music. The young actors have already participated in other plays directed by Koršunovas, such as Elizaveta Bam, Cleansed, and Egle the Queen of Serpents, and Childhood, directed by one of them, Karolis Vilkas, who plays the groom in The Wedding. Obviously, for these young people there is no shortage of space for expressing and improving themselves, or making contact with a new, young and undecided audience. I have heard more than once that Oskaras Koršunovas needs an excellent actor. It is not surprising because the excellent actors working with the director usually create a special atmosphere, which adds a very special, unique light to his plays. For this reason, that is the actors’ subtle navigation between the role-actor-human, The Lower Depths and The Seagull directed by Koršunovas stick in the memory for a very long time. […]

The widely smiling sister of the bride, actress Greta Petrovskytė, greets the gathering crowd. Finally, there is an opportunity to see the actress in a role different from that of a crazy martyr and to discover that she is good at playing a different type of character (in this case, that of an excited, restless young lady). Just as excited, because excitement is contagious, the audience waits for the arrival of the newlyweds, hands full of rice dealt out by Petrovskytė. […]

True, the scene before our eyes is hysterically funny and triggers the imagination: there is a group of nervous and bored losers, who have nothing in common, sitting at the same table and trying to feel, play, or, rather, endure the party. Gradually words take over the uncomfortable silent pauses. Different things are discussed here – from those that are in the play to more topical issues of the day, such as IKEA, Leonardo DiCaprio, Paulo Coelho or Lithuanian theater. […]

At the end of the party, everybody is more or less drunk, angry and tired. Much like the characters of The Lower Depths, but without the deep sadness, skepticism, and wisdom of the latter. The faces in The Wedding hide nothing and say nothing. The sadness of these characters is overflowing, but it does not linger, nor does the wisdom or, rather, its rudiments. […]

This is a play about different types of fools. Those who marry and procreate (some in the opposite order), those who are together only to be able to terrorize each other in a variety of actions and words, those who will always blame the other, usually the spouse, for their unhappy life. The play is about an emptiness, in which there are some values that are worth cursing, crying and fighting for. Moreover, fortunately, everything is so exaggerated that in no way concerns us, well, maybe just our neighbors.

*****

Milda Brukštutė, 15min.lt, 18th October 2016