Anna Polívková and Pan Padlý in Ponec

Their duet tells a story about long years of a common life of a couple on the level where lack of understanding takes turns with appreciation, manipulation with humiliation, where competitiveness of jumping performers changes into entertaining game. Tereza Ondrová talks with exaggeration about a situation of two people who have lost their illusions about each other after long years of living together and they unwillingly accept their caprices. As contrast to elderly couple appealed the young and kind of “light” and lanky looking Anna Polívková who intruded the performance right at the beginning and was singing verses how she would like to experience the true love, singing all the more desperately and vehemently the more determinedly Robert Janč was trying to remove her from the stage. The piece sputtered with ideas, however after the second seeing (since the opening night) it doesn’t have much to discover, also the timing of particular scenes, which becomes too protracted in some parts, lags behind a bit. Less is simply sometimes more …

Anna Polívková as well opens the topic of becoming old and of unfulfilled (or fulfilled?) desires and dreams. She changed from a dress a la light-o’-love into elderly grandpa who gained the spectators’ sympathy right at the opening shy entrance to the audience. Characteristic halting walk, old man’s shiver, unavoidable progress of dementia were mastered excellently. During approximately 20 minutes she showed variety of comical situations, starting with greeting her own shadow and examining treasures hidden in the pockets of her suit. The main drive of the old man’s actions was his desire to fly, come closer to the sky, namely at the beginning through maximum physical effort and later on through a dialog with “god”, starting from the painful endeavor to appeals and later changing into threats. Everything with no end.

The mercy finally comes, however rather in the form of „devil’s originator“ – a woman – Tereza Ondrová clothed into the former dress of Anna Polívková from the first performance. With unsure pace, as being drunk, she doddgers along to the old men and gives him an endlessly long kiss. The body of the old man remains on the floor, but it seems as if his soul was uplifting. With the rest of the red lipstick on his lips, he starts to dance, while the dynamic and trance of the dance is rising. Right on the peak of the swirl the light comes down, music goes silent. The end.

The impression persists, say mainly thanks to the high interpretation quality of Polívková and the comicality, beneath which one can know the tragic of the situation itself, followed by the music of G.F. Händel coming as if from far away or by improvised sounds of cymbalo. The shyness and doubt, which the actor(ess) enters the scene with and which she gradually gets rid of after making the contact with the audience, culminating in the moments when he/she is craving the clap for the performed gags with the bows, is also moving. She had rightfully deserved it and the audience appropriately appreciated her effort.

Translation: Barbora Čepičková