Witwold Gombowicz (1904-1969), Poland’s greatest comic writer, wrote his tragic farce in 1934, but it was not produced for thirty years. It was first seen in London in 1971 during Peter Daubeny’s World Theatre Season and has rarely been seen since in Britain. I am surprised the play has never found its way into either the National or the RSC repertoire.
The heir to the throne, bored with court life, proposes to the ugliest, smelliest, sullenest, most lethargic, most pallid and lowliest commoner in the realm. The court presumes it is a joke in bad taste, but he goes ahead and marries her. Ivona’s ugliness is a perfect mirror to the court’s moral ugliness. Her disturbing, passive, silent presence is a permanent and humiliating rebuke, driving them to Shakespearian distraction, madness and murder.
Kos Mantzakos’s production for The Sturdy Beggars Company is acted by an all-male cast in drag, which means that everybody is grotesque. The court should be full of beautiful people, not harridans. The clownish white make-up they all wear is a mistake. Ivona is acted by a shaven-head Lindsay Kemp lookalike when what is wanted is a plain, awkward and genuine girl. The play is robbed of its pathos and horror and the audience goes on laughing loudly even when the farce turns very nasty and ceases to be funny.