THE STORY OF DECLINE. Director Małgorzata Warsicka

Małgorzata Warsicka’s play is based on motifs from the Honoré de Balzac novel Cousin Bette from his iconic cycle “The Human Comedy”. What the French writer subjects to thorough analysis here is not great passion and love, but rather the pursuit of money and its impact on relationships.

“Every character here is stuck in a web of complicated financial and emotional dependencies, including the Baron and the Baroness (Dominika Bednarczyk and Sławomir Maciejewski) and their destitute cousin Bette. The director doesn’t stage the original text, but the audience watches its presentation, accompanied by music composed by Karol Nepelski. An acclaimed opera singer, Barbara Kinga Majewska, stars in the project. The actors move seamlessly between playing specific characters from the novel and commenting on their actions, revealing the irony and absurdity of the unfolding events, and colliding with a grotesque form of cruelty.” (from the theatre’s archive of reviews)