“Knapik and Kowańska infect me with their attentiveness – to repetitive gestures, subtle tensions, patterns that I see on stage. Their theatre is not easily forgotten. It gets under your skin and stays there, where a role usually ends. Very Ibsen delights with its form, surprises with its unpredictability and throws us off our safe, cherished balance – from the way we have learnt to think about theatre, and which we still have to unlearn. (…) Knapik and Kowańska infect me with their attentiveness – to the repetitive gestures, subtle tensions and patterns I see on stage. Their theatre is not easily forgotten. It gets under your skin and stays there, where a role usually ends. ‘Very Ibsen’ delights with its form, surprises with its unpredictability and throws us off our safe, beloved balance – from the way we have learnt to think about theatre, and which we still have to unlearn.”

“The production is a delight on every level. Kowańska’s script is funny and witty; Knapik has directed it with a light touch and flair. The childishly red make-up, Klaudia Hegab’s kitschy Scandinavian costumes, Szymon Lechowicz’s music and Knapik’s makeshift set design create a madcap world on stage.

Watching this production is pure fun. “Very fun”!

“I must honestly admit that I haven’t seen a production as dense as ‘Very Ibsen’ in a long time. Well, perhaps the only rival in this category might be ‘Paprykarz szczeciński’ by Michał Kmiecik and Marcin Liber – as it happens, also staged at the Teatr Współczesny in Szczecin (…). One could write a separate piece about the Szczecin theatre’s cast, but one thing must be said: they are fantastic. With such rapidly shifting registers as this production demands – ranging from the grotesque, group therapy, drama and parody – maintaining the pace and dramatic coherence is a real art, and everyone – Arkadiusz Buszko, Julia Gadzina, Iwona Kowalska, Michał Lewandowski, Kacper Kujawa and Joanna Matuszak – manage to do just that. Incidentally, I’d very much like to see a play one day about what goes on in the mind of an actor who has to juggle so many characters, tones and languages within a single performance.

After all, playing multiple characters in a single play is a recurring theme in our theatre, partly for casting and economic reasons. Here, I get the impression there is also an attempt to problematise this process, but it really begs for more. (…) Finally, I’d like to add that for a critic, such productions are simply a pleasure – a game of discovering meanings, tracing the paths the creators have chosen to lead us down. After all, that’s our job: to seek out meanings, delve into structures, surrender to the theatre and, at the same time, deconstruct it. It’s fantastic that there is still a theatre capable of stirring the mind, and that it is right here in Szczecin.”

“The acting is based on distance, mechanised movements and alienation. In some lines, the characters’ voices are overlaid with a pre-recorded voice of a different tone, which emphasises the distance between the actors and their roles. The characters’ credibility is deliberately put to the test; as well as playing Ibsen’s roles (sometimes more than one), the actors also speak as employees of the theatre in Szczecin and share their thoughts on the characters they are portraying. Kowańska and Knapik cleverly play with the contexts of Ibsen’s texts, the interweaving of the biographies of dramatic characters, their contemporary interpretations and elements of Norwegian culture. There is a considerable degree of detachment from themselves and the material. An example is the scene in which the characters from ‘Ghosts’ put on vampire fangs. The humour varies: from the absurd, through the intellectually sophisticated, to the bawdy, as in Rabelais. (…) As the creators state in the programme, their aim was to construct a world that serves as a link in the chain of collective memory. Hence not only Ibsen, but also Leo Tolstoy, Edvard Munch and Nikolai Astrup. Writers, musicians and painters return like ghosts from the past, dictating the present and determining the future. Fortunately, all this postmodern intertextuality is gradually pierced by laughter. The more concepts the audience deciphers, the more fun they will have.”