British theatre has been slow to address
what is now one of the UK’s two largest ethnic minorities. Only India
(possibly) now outstrips Poland as a source of non-native population.
(This is what made last year’s protests about the paucity of Chinese
people in an RSC ensemble so absurd, since the same group performed
Boris Godunov with no eastern
Europeans at all from an immigrant population twice or three times the
size, and no complaints.) Yet the Polish dramatic presence has so far,
with a few honourable exceptions, been negligible. Anna Wakulik’s
three-hander is the second Polish play to be staged at the Royal Court,
32 years after the first. There’s a lot of ground to make up.
In the context of this paucity, there is a danger that when such work
is seen it operates merely as a
strain of exotica. Wakulik’s play by and large overcomes this by
turning the tables: in its depiction of the triangular relationship
between Marysia, Piotr and his father Jan (a gynaecologist with whom
Marysia has graduated from patient to receptionist and lover), it is
London that is the exotic location, where Piotr is living a dissipated
student life (or is he?) and where, when Marysia visits him, the
triangle grows acute. But Wakulik’s principal setting and focus remains
Poland, and in particular its relationship with the Catholic Church in
the matter of abortion. (You can now deduce much of the plot of the
90-minute piece.)
The social and cultural resonance of the play is partly lost on us
(although I would be interested to see it play to an Irish audience).
However, director Caroline Steinbeis makes up for this with a taut,
beautifully designed production. Max Jones turns the Theatre Upstairs
into a chapel, and Alexander Caplen percolates a series of soundscapes
through it. All three actors are impressive: Owen Teale as Jan, Max
Bennett as Piotr and in particular Sinéad Matthews as Marysia. Matthews
is an actress whom I may find hard to like but have no difficulty
admiring, and here she gives an intense, compelling performance. It
would be nice to hope that this play might break out from the Court’s
more usual audience to the Polish-British community, but that may be a
little sanguine yet. It is, though, a decent step on the way to proper
dramatic representation.
Written for the Financial
Times.