Croatian National Theatre Ivana pl. Zajca in Rijeka

Director Sebastijan Horvat
Dramaturg Milan Marković Matthis
Costume Designer Belinda Radulović
Set Designer Jürgen Kirner
Composer Drago Ivanuša
Lighting Designer Boris Blidar

Cast
Dražen Mikulić
Tanja Smoje
Jelena Lopatić
Dean Krivačić
Sabina Salamon
Biljana Torić
Davor Jureško
Leon Lučev
Marija Tadić
Jasmin Mekić

Croatian Rhapsody by Miroslav Krleža is »a lyrical prose piece in drama technique«, dealing with the harsh reality of the Great World and the imminent revolution in its aftermath which was to wipe out all social division established during the war. It is set in a packed third-class carriage of the Hungarian State Railways in 1917, representing a symbolic image of a war-torn country. Krleža managed to create a stage scream that eluded the usual dramatic conventions of his time.

Director Sebastijan Horvat and dramaturg Milan Marković Matthis and their team created a production entitled Standing Over the Grave of Stupid Europe, by way of using the actors’ improvisations and adding a contemporary context loosely based on motifs of Krleža’s play. The setting is a dinner party in a bourgeois lounge with an old-fashioned gramophone and a piano. The elite occupying a comfortable position at the top of the social pyramid self-sufficiently discusses hot issues of contemporary European society – economic crisis and a rising unemployment, expatriation of young people, social divisions and snubbing of the powerless. It raises topical questions about migrants in Europe. The production, which confronts us with the Glembays of long gone and today, raises a typically Krleža-like question: »What is Europe now?«

Slovene surtitles