XVI MFG Hulajgęba - Białostocki Teatr lalek, Białystok

Hulajgęba is an adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke, some fragments of his diary, and thoughts scattered around Polish Memories and A Kind of Testament. The title of both the adaptation and the staging comes from Ferdydurke – "Mug on the Loose and New Entrapment".... In his foreword to the Spanish edition, Gombrowicz says the Form keeps pushing man into the Immature – ‘one’s style influences another’s style’ (PF, p.412); this suggests the most profound meaning of the novel: man is essentially for ever child-spirited. The show is a timid attempt at linking Dante’s, Virgil’s, and Beatrice’s wanderings around The Divine Comedy’s after-world with the Protagonist’s and Professor Pimko’s journey through the hell of school and the bourgeois purgatory of the Youngbloods to the spring of paradisaical childhood at the Małoszyce mansion. Ferdydurke via The Divine Comedy is a sort of game with the spectator, a persiflage, and a game of associations rules by ‘the monstrous creator of the world’. The issues tackled by the Protagonist/ Dante include finding an antidote to the world’s heterogeneity, upstaging the attitude of a player that sanctions stupidity in wisdom and wisdom in stupidity, finally, exposure to hell and suffering we prepare for ourselves and others. In the face of any social and political crises, Gombrowicz’s method of recognising the world becomes showing the human life as a constant struggle against the emergent form and a paradoxical delight in and fascination with stereotypes. The Protagonist’s eccentric adventures and resolutions are all the time commented on by himself, introducing a unique note of playful philosophical reflection. Gombrowicz’s novel of 1937 continues to be topical, shocking, painful, and funny. In this context, Hulajgęba is a peregrination around man’s peripheries. In the dimensions of living and formal theatre at the Białystok Puppet Theatre, it seems to acquire an even broader significance, becoming a free fantasy about man’s being in the world. ‘It’s a pleasure to watch the mugs carouse. The director promised he’d show man ensnared by others and trying to find a way out of this position. Can it be done? Can we but have more and newer mugs? WE keep having them affixed and need to accept this. ‘We are condemned to others,’ Śmigasiewicz reminds us. That’s the message sent from the stage, too. Despite all the humour, reflection is bound to come after all, together with even more questions about the human existence. Cheers to the director and the whole theatrical team, who have brought Witold Gombrowicz’s artistic and existential dilemmas back with such passion and a feeling for the classic work.’ Anna Dycha, „Dziennik Teatralny Podlasie”/ Podlasie Theatrical Weekly