In a rare visit to L.A., Studium Teatrine, the Warsaw-based theater company, has brought its Holocaust drama, The King of Hearts is off Again, to the Odyssey Theater Ensemble for a two-week run.
The play, adapted by S/T's artistic director, Piotr Borowski, from the novel by Hanna Krall, digs deep into the hidden depths of recent Polish history. Some three million Jews were killed in Poland during WW II by the Nazis and their Polish collaborators, but the slaughter is rarely talked or written about by those who lived through it (or took part in it). In fact, according to remarks made by Borowski in a post-performance Q & A at the Odyssey, most young Poles aren't even aware that Jews once lived in their country.
To help jolt Poland out of its widespread moral amnesia, Borowski worked for a year with his company to turn Krall's sprawling novel into a theater piece (in Polish with English supertitles). Utilizing physical-theater techniques learned from his apprenticeship (in Italy) with Jerzy Grotowski, Borowski picked four actors to play twenty characters embarked on an epic journey, circa 1943-1968.
His heroine is Izolda, a Jew who becomes a Catholic in order to try and save her husband from the concentration camps. Going through unspeakable horrors -- firing squads, beatings, rape, slave labor, etc. -- she doggedly and courageously persists in her mission, with love always being the driving force.
the King of Hearts jumps back and forth in time in sometimes confusing fashion, making for a distancing between actor and audience. Eventually, though, the power and truth of the play win out, catching up the audience in its hallucinatory spell.
