Florian Zeller is a popular contemporary French writer. We have already had the opportunity to see successful performances of his pieces (for example Father in Atelier 212). The truth is a comedy that is successfully performed in theaters in London and New York since 2017, and from Thursday, May 7, it is also played in the regular repertoire Bitef theater, produced by Filmkombina and co-produced by Bitef Theater.
Comedy The truth (translation by Ivana Dimić) talks about an emotionally intertwined relationship between two married couples. Everyone appeals to the truth and everyone seeks the truth. However, love, family and friendship relationships are woven from white lies, half-truths and outright lies. The piece begins like a vaudeville - two lovers try to hide their cheating from their spouses. Why does someone live in a lie even though they constantly refer to the truth? The lie is justified by the fact that the truth would disrupt marital and friendship relations. A citizen wants his neighbors to perceive him as good and expects them to treat him that way. At the same time, he wants to constantly compete with others (in tennis, love affairs, business successes) and win. To ensure that your neighbors always treat you well and fairly regardless of the fact that you compete with them and defeat them, your good image in the eyes of others must not be tarnished. In this fundamentally paradoxical situation, lying seems like a good solution. With laughter and disbelief, we look at what a man is ready for in order to preserve his image as a good, responsible and successful person. Also, Florian Zeller shows us that everyone plays the same game, and the one who finds himself in the position of a defrauded fraudster feels particularly angry and frustrated. As the lies pile up and multiply, the situations become so complicated that they become absurd. To tell the truth, if every turn in the plot was strictly analyzed, we would come to the conclusion that not everything was carried out quite logically. But, again, the main value of the comedy of intrigue (among which vaudeville is the most famous and played the most) is that you don't think about whether what you're watching is logical or not, but that you get carried away by the delight of witnessing the wrangling of characters in situations in which you would never want to see yourself, but you could imagine them.
The main success of staging such plays lies in the actors and their well-balanced acting style. And one note right away (to avoid confusion): the play does not have a classic cast list, but only a list of actors without the names of the characters (which is a frequent "fashion" in Belgrade theaters in recent years), which is why, when talking about the characters, we will use the names of the actors.
Elem, the axis of acting in a play The truth is the tandem of Gordan Kičić and Nebojša Cile Ilić. Gordan Kicic is a fast actor and he "plays" everything since the exhibition. He constantly changes facial expressions and very expressively shows the different mental states of his character. Of course, a game of lies begins with his character and he believes for a very long time that he leads the game superiorly. Kicic plays a smug guy who enjoys his virtuosity. Nebojsa Cile Ilić, opposite Kicic, acts as a "slow actor" and therefore plays a character who is passive, who endures the plot, who is good because he can't do otherwise... However, as the plot develops, we see how Cile Ilić, literally just by changing the way he looks at his partner, changed the energy of his character and thus revealed to us that his character is also lying. The self-confidence in the attitude and actions of the character played by Nebojša Cile Ilić as a counter-reaction has an even greater acceleration in Kicic, which makes Kicic's character almost absurd. The difference in the way of acting between Tamara Dragičević and Milica Trifunović is not so pronounced, but, again, the two of them are a kind of counterweight to their acting partners who play the roles of husbands. Tamara Dragičević plays the wife of the character played by Gordan Kicic. She is calm and reserved, while he is hyperactive. On the other hand, the character of Milica Trifunović is more expressive than the character of Nebojša Ilić. The director of the play is actor and stage movement expert Damjan Kecojević. He created very good "traffic" on the stage - who enters when, who looks at whom, who sees what, when the actors touch each other and when they don't... With this kind of fine directorial work, the excitement of the audience is heightened to the maximum, which smiles, smiles, giggles, and even laughs out loud, enjoying the uncomfortable and absurd situations in which the characters are brought because of their big and small lies.
And only in the third plan, if you look at yourself quite honestly and honestly in the mirror that this play offers you, you can ask the following questions: how many times have I been tempted to trample on my own life principles in my desire to achieve personal gain? How many times have I succumbed to that temptation, using smaller or bigger lies? How many times have I deceived myself to justify my own actions? If you do not recognize yourself, if you are convinced that you have never violated any of your principles and you have never lied to anyone, then fine, we will not insist on further questioning. This play was not created to call out, question and condemn anyone. It was made to make us laugh and entertain us in this gloomy time, and that, you will admit, is not so little.
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