MEDIATHEK

Orestes Material – This auteur-style production by Jan Frič is a free and relaxed variation on the ancient Greek theme. Using the popular culture and aesthetics of the 1990s, it playfully transposes the old myth to a contemporary setting. Orestes returns to his childhood. At the same time, like a proper desperado, he has one desire – that when he dies, it should be a real occasion with all the attendant glory. A play about the necessity of accepting fate, despite our attempts to revolt against it. In the Greek drama, Orestes is finally liberated from his tortured conscience by a god. In Ferenzová and Frič's adaptation, Orestes grows up into a world where he is alone under an empty sky, with no gods, and is forced to see what he has done.

Reviews:
"Jan Frič is a director who has been creating a distinctive style for some time, regardless of the nature of the material – his eccentric humour and original gags (here including the sending out of the pigeon post and soothsaying from the newspapers) makes itself felt regardless of whether he is staging a contemporary Finnish drama, a classical comedy of characters or a Greek tragedy. In Orestes Material Frič once again shows that he is one of the greatest hopes of his generation."
(by Kateřina Veselovská, Nekultura.cz)


"Frič's production, with writing and dramaturgical assistance from Lucie Ferenzová, uses Greek tragedy as a universally-valid matrix on which, with exaggeration and humour, he imprints his own personally-guaranteed experience. The resulting image is forceful and extremely authentic, although it is hard to express the experience of this production in words (...)

Frič talks about contemporary society as a world without gods (and without fathers), where, under an empty heaven, we have no choice but to rely on ourselves, and where the only form of catharsis is to see what we have really done. He is thus also probably expressing the attitude of his generation, whose pragmatism and, hopefully, courage to see things as they really are can be taken (at least for now) as promising."
(by Marie Reslová, Hospodářské noviny)


"Frič's production is a whirl of jokes, references and gags, including a "television" recipe for grilled octopus, the song Voyage voyage, children's (again!) games involving a little jumping man, and the shouts of "Look out, here comes hubris..." in which the audience can occasionally lose itself. But there is no harm in letting yourself be carried away by a roller-coaster with no brakes, only coming round at the end."
(by Vojtěch Varyš, Týden)

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