Life, with its thousand anecdotes, goes on.
December 14 2023
In Primeval and Other Times, Polish Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk takes you to a village where the inhabitants try to survive the consequences of two world wars, communism and the advent of modernity. How do they resist the violence of history and nature? In the hands of Guy Cassiers and Hotel Modern, the result is technically masterful theatre that rejects major dramatic conflicts.
Primeval and Other Times (1996) is one of the first novels by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk. For director Guy Cassiers, Peter van Kraaij has made a clever stage version of it. It has become a text that intertwines narration and empathy. For example, the players use two registers. The complexity is increased because the different performers play multiple roles. In this way, the makers were able to do justice to the numerous storylines that together form the portrait of a small village in Poland. The village is both a safe place and a prison.
When we enter the room, we see an empty plateau. There are some people walking around preparing indeterminate little things. If you look closely, there is a scale model of houses to scale at the back. Then Chris Nietveld comes to the fore and leads us into the world of the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. We are in the village of Primeval, somewhere lost in Poland. The back wall has now come to life. When we look around, we see someone with a tiny camera filming a tiny model of a watermill. Immediately we see that Hotel Modern is at work. In addition to the actors, the three members of the Rotterdam collective will form an essential part of the performance.
Everything that is quoted or described in the texts will become concrete on five moving screens. Sticks and twigs will be transformed by the camera into forests and landscapes. We will see flowers, and trees that will be snowed under. A pile of twigs and dry leaves are set on fire with a Bunsen burner, and on the screen we see the world go down in fire. A house is built with care – in a kind of aquarium. When the destruction of the Second World War breaks loose, a pandemic breaks loose, with flashes of light and electronic effects, which flatten the viewer just before the intermission.
In the second part, a house is built – in a kind of aquarium – but overwhelmingly ‘real’ on the screen. We have arrived in modernity, and now a car drives by on the screen. A doctor rides a motorcycle in search of medicine – a combination of screen and person. Everything here is technically masterful.
On the screens, all this creates a cinematic realism. But on stage we can always see how the image is made. It is a game of making and creating illusion, something that fits in perfectly with the vision of director Guy Cassiers. It involves the viewer and at the same time places him at a distance. Let me call this ‘double viewing’, which makes for an honest experience. For three hours, Hotel Modern will let the viewer stay in the village of Primeval.
THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS
The various inhabitants of the village will tell their vicissitudes. In Peter van Kraaij’s novel adaptation, this happens in short scenes, in which the actors are mainly narrators. They use two registers: either they message from the outside, or they empathize with a character. Short pieces form a puzzle, in which the focus is not on the people but on the village. As a result, the numerous storylines remain side by side. Time slips by with small and big problems.
We see this in the story of Genofewa (Chris Nietveldt), whom we follow from the moment she has children until she is in a wheelchair and dies. We first meet her in 1917. She has to take care of the miller’s business on her own, because her husband is at the front. She is the first strong woman of the play. A boy comes along and falls in love with her. She will give birth to a bastard. In the further development of this story, you can expect a great tragedy when the husband returns. But this love triangle is no more than an anecdote about life as it is. A summary of this philosophy of life can be found in the words of daughter Floortje: ‘People think that the cause of the madness is a great and dramatic event, a kind of suffering that cannot be tolerated. But that’s not the case.’ This rejection of major dramatic conflicts determines the atmosphere of the evening. More important is the passing of time and having children. In this way, Tokarczuk forces us to take a mild look at the villagers.
As time passes, so do the miserable times of the twentieth century. There is the passage of a German soldier. He briefly describes what Nazism stands for: for him, a general cleansing of society is necessary. Later we learn that he has been shot. After the war, the communists appeared. They take over the possessions of the large landowners. In Oer, this is Popielski. However, he is not concerned with politics, but with religion. A rabbi gives him a book, from which he reads. They are alternative Bible stories. For example, the book says that the conflict between Cain and Abel ends with the murder of Abel. The central question is whether God exists. Perhaps he is just a figment of man’s imagination. Some heretical, or gnostic versions of the Bible stories, are subjects that are very much of Tokarczuk’s concern, because it is a matter that she has explored further in other novels.
EXPLOSIONS OF STARS AND BLACK HOLES
The various passages from the book will be read by Gijs Scholten van Aschat. Since he gives the texts an ironic twist, these theological reflections have become light-hearted interludes, brilliantly performed. Finally, Popielski takes refuge in madness, without politics playing a special role.
Due to the large number of characters, Tokarczuk can touch on a number of themes, which remain side by side. There is the interest of children, the interest in nature, the threat of the forest, the resistance to social change, the fear of the city. Very important is the procession of strong women.
A very special character is Izydor, played soberly and with great intensity by Maarten Heijmans. He is an outsider, the great lonely of the village. In the end, he dies in full consciousness of the loss. The spaces inside, he says, “fell apart into small pieces.” Dying is then “a destruction that was many times more terrible than anything else, than war, than fires, than explosions of stars and black holes.” In this way, Tokarczuk juxtaposes the dramas that take place in the world with personal suffering. The worst thing is the disappearance of the individual, who leaves no trace.
This pessimistic note does not conclude the piece. In the final scene, Adelka (Ilke Paddenburg) returns to the village to take care of her old father Pawel (Minne Koole). It’s the only truly tender moment of the evening. For the very last image, a symbolic element is used. At the beginning of the evening, grandfather Michal (Eelco Smit) brought an old-fashioned coffee grinder. It has remained in the family and is now brought out by granddaughter Adelka. It is an ambiguous image, from the structure of the depiction the coffee grinder functions as a closure, a circle that is complete. The twisting motion of grinding can also mean: life, with its thousand anecdotes, goes on.
The performance clearly bears the signature of Guy Cassiers. His collaboration with Hotel Modern has resulted in a series of catchy, surprising images. They make the narrative, image after image, concrete. With the players of the ITA company, he has a beautiful instrument in his hands. His search for some understated honesty can be found in everyone: that applies to the well-known members of the company. Someone like Frieda Pittoors strikes an overwhelming truth in a few brief interventions. But newcomers such as Laura De Geest, Daniël Kolf or ‘Ntianu Stug are also convincing and fascinating as characters and storytellers. In this way, this performance is stylish in all areas. All choices made form an aesthetically pure whole. This stay in the village of Primeval is one of the strongest performances that Guy Cassiers has made in his rich career.
