Zagreb City Theatre Komedija

Miljenko Smoje: VELO MISTO

Premiered on 3 March 2023 in the Komedija Theatre.

Directed and adapted by: Marina Pejnović

Director's assistant: Patrik Sečen

Set designer: Liberta Mišan

Costume designer: Petra Pavičić

Choreographer: Dejan Jakovljević

Composer and sound designer: Vid Adam Hribar

Lighting designer: Elvis Butković

Costume designer's assistant: Eva Karakaš Bedrina

Speech advisor: Joško Ševo

 

Cast:

Narrator: Vinko Kraljević

Repairman: Damir Lončar

Papundek: Ivan Čuić

Four-eyes: Ognjen Milovanović

Violeta: Vanda Winter

Pegula: Ivan Glowatzky

Duje: Marin Klišmanić

Ana: Dajana Čuljak

Kate: Ana Magud

Tonči: Ivan Magud

Ferata: Filip Juričić

Marjeta: Nera Stipičević

Rico / Policeman: Adnan Prohić

Strikan: Davor Svedružić

Netjak / Countyman / Priest: Goran Malus

Picaferaj / Nino: Saša Buneta

Doc Vice: Željko Duvnjak

Professor / Stojan / Mićo: Zlatko Ožbolt

Granny Marta / Mare Mulica /Marjeta's mother / Duje's mother / Peasant: Jasna Palić Picukarić

In many parts: Komedija Theatre Choir: Aleta Arbanas Rendulić, Kristina Habuš, Dora Masle, Tea Nuić, Irena Raduka, Dino Antonić, Boris Barberić, Dario Došlić, Božidar Peričić, Zoran Simikić and Matija Škovrc

 

Voice and video narrator: Dražen Bratulić

 

Although many are familiar with this title from the legendary Croatian TV series, we decided to give it a chance in a new, theatrical reading. Unencumbered by the characters from the series and their famous interpreters, this play by Komedija rushed to the challenge of showing a new Velo misto, told in theatrical language. The main character of the play is the city of Split - but we follow it through the eyes of a whole series of characters, who, although they belong to different political and social contexts, exist in a mental constant. Despite six different governments changing, six different flags (Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Socialist Yugoslavia), the city and its people remain the same, they do not let themselves be subdued. The play is mainly set in the year 1936, when the city is ruled by a sense of great disorder and constant change, when it seems to everyone that there will never be a war, and yet everything looks as if it could start at any moment. Through the chaos of pre-war inflation, Russian immigrants, smuggling, emigration of young people to America, queues for food handouts, transfer of Ustasha to Italy and communists to international brigades in Spain; our characters meet in impossible combinations and help each other without any assumption of what will happen in just a few years. That's why we'll laugh, but that's also why our laughter will be tragic. We the audience know exactly which direction our characters are going. Humor that carries life. A play about surviving life itself. Velo misto as an apotheosis to the fact that every politic is a form of oppression of which life is oppositon, a life that refuses to be shaped by it and survives and outlives every political context with and through humor. Because people and their mentality remain, and politics are transient. The city remembers life and life is.

 

Duration: about 180 minutes; the play has one intermission

 

Photo (c) Ines Novković

 

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