Waiting room, final stop
A cold comedy with music
The play premiered in 2005 at the Chorzów-Katowice Theatre and remained in its repertoire for three years. The well-known Polish singer Renata Przemyk wrote the songs for this "cold comedy with music."
Characters
ESPERA-EN-DIOS: Juan, traveler
JANUSZ: Stationmaster, mid-forties
DOROTA: his wife, early forties
BOBIK: Wojtek, factory owner, mid-thirties
GOR: Bart, a Dutch businessman, mid-forties
MARIA: his beautiful Polish wife, late thirties.
MARIOLA: a young prostitute – early twenties
SASCHA: her “friend”
WUNDERLICH: Richard, a German poet – mid-seventies
PAKULA: Pyotr, retired technician, mid-seventies
HAJDUK: Thomasz, a successful football player
KISZ: Danuta, hairdresser - mid-forties.
EDITH: Amateur painter - early sixties
ULRIKE: Amateur painter - early sixties
CHRISTA: Amateur painter - early sixties.
NOWAK: a railway inspector
ADAM: Serafinski, a young conductor
PSIUK: Orchestra Conductor
MUSICIAN
ACTION
On this winter night, the train between Szczecin and Gdansk fails to make it. Somewhere along the route, it gets stuck in a snowdrift, and the passengers are forced to spend the night in a small, forgotten provincial train station.
On the hard, narrow wooden benches, travelers of all different kinds now take their seats: among them sits the elderly German poet, seeking the end of his escape; the cleaning woman who commutes monthly between Berlin and Gdansk; the desperate beauty tormented by her Dutch husband on a business trip; a young prostitute fleeing into love; a homesick footballer who has won and lost everything in Germany; a cynical electrician suffering from short circuits; a Polish furniture manufacturer on a journey to paradise; a trio of enthusiastic amateur painters who know how to paint white; a stern railway inspector caught between two breasts; and even an endlessly touring spa orchestra, overworked and sleepily trudging through the old waiting room. And every now and then, a mysterious traveler appears, asking no questions, yet seemingly knowing everyone.
A series of burlesque, tragic, and comic encounters unfolds among the waiting passengers, through which a despairing stationmaster staggers from one failure to the next.
REVIEWS
This stay is not a rest.
The journey continues without a timetable: dreams stir, ghosts roam. The past is the scab on the skin of the present.
The future is like a train station where you wanted to get off, but whose name you can't remember.
It's cold, you shiver, you long to leave but can't – and yet, in the end, towards morning when the clearing train arrives, you've traveled much further than you wanted.
(Hanna Karolak, “Kulturaonline”)
Apke forces us to laugh at violence, but simultaneously exposes its absurdity and helplessness, and ultimately allows love to triumph, even though it is probably too late for that. His comedic style is reminiscent of J.B. Shaw. He isn't afraid of words that both mask and unmask his characters.
(Tomasz Miłkowski, “Trybuna”)
