Thursday 5 November 2009

Cezary Tomaszewski
The Merry Widow

3pm & 8pm. Tickets £8.00 (£6.00 concessions)
8pm show followed by optional, informl Q&A session with artist
UK Premiere.

In Cezary Tomaszewski’s new production worlds of cliché clash when Franz Lehár’s opulently overloaded operetta The Merry Widow is cast with four real-life Polish cleaning ladies.

Lower class Hanna’s advancement to the Parisian haut monde is projected into present-day society with its dependence upon foreign workers. In an ironic way, the tense relationship between the supposed bourgeoisie and a proletariat of migrant workers in the absurd operetta world is breaking apart. Together with the shooting star of Polish drama Pawel Demirski, Tomaszewski frees the genre from the dusts of simplicity and naivety and succeeds in placing into the centre of attention those who are otherwise almost wholly excluded from cultural creative processes.

“Hardly ever before has this Viennese parallel world between labour migration, uprooting and precarity been brought to stage in such a funny, yet not at all superficial way. In the end, the performers’ relief was just as great as the audience’s applause. This Merry Widow is neither trash nor cliché. This Merry Widow is cult.” Wolfgang Huber-Lang / APA

Cezary Tomaszewski studied dance, performance, dramatics and music in Warsaw and Linz. He has worked as choreographer and director on numberous projects in Vienna, Zurich and Lausanne.
He spent a short time cleaning for money.

TO BOOK TICKETS, CLICK HERE

A coproduction of brut Vienna and Bregenz Festival—Art of Our Times In co-operation with Frascati Amsterdam.
Supported by the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna, the Instytut Adama Mickiewicza and the Vienna Polish Institute.

With thanks to Londynek.net
Created in August of 2002, Londynek.net is the flagship website for Poles residing in Great Britain. Londynek.net is a comprehensive source of information regarding various aspects of life on the British Isles for Polish people in the UK and simlutaneously it is a great source of information on the Polish population for anyone who is interested in discovering who the Poles actually are.