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In the bustling heart of Warsaw’s theatre scene, director Igor Gorzkowski has crafted a delightfully meta and chaotic production titled “Open Your Eyes.” The play draws its peculiar lifeblood from two short stories by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, found in her 2001 collection “Playing on Many Drums.” Gorzkowski isn’t presenting a straightforward adaptation; instead, he weaves together “Open Your Eyes, You’re Already Dead” and “Dress Rehearsal” into a single, spiraling narrative. At its core, the production is a love letter and a playful critique of the crime genre, exploring why we are so drawn to tales of murder and mayhem. It posits that in our chaotic, unpredictable world, the structured puzzle of a whodunit offers a comforting, if illusory, sense of order—a promise that clues add up, mysteries are solved, and justice, however fictional, is served.
The beating heart of this theatrical concoction is simply known as the Reader, brought to life by actress Anna Cieślak. She is not a typical heroine but rather our guide—a woman so dissatisfied with the blandness of her own reality and so impatient with the slow burn of her crime novel that she does the unthinkable: she steps directly into its pages. Cieślak describes her character as the driving spiral of this crime comedy, a narrator who pulls both the audience and the imagined characters along in her wake. This leap from reader to participant is a device more familiar from film, yet on stage, it becomes a vibrant, live-wire metaphor for the power of imagination itself. The play, through the Reader’s journey, argues that reading is not a passive act but an adventurous one that expands our inner worlds, grants us courage, and provides vital distance from the breakneck speed of modern life.
Once the Reader tumbles into the story, she finds herself amidst a gathering of gloriously flawed and petty characters, each a sharp parody of classic crime fiction tropes. As actress Ewa Makomaska, who plays the enigmatic Ulrika, notes, no one here has a soft spot for anyone else. These are individuals sculpted from jealousy, self-obsession, and childish rivalry. They have been assembled at a remote location by a world-famous crime writer, not for a cozy weekend, but as players in a vicious game of succession for the title of the most widely read author in the genre. Each hails from a different country and a slightly different sub-genre, creating a delicious clash of styles and expectations. Makomaska’s Ulrika, with a distinctive hairstyle that slyly evokes Tokarczuk herself, emphasizes that this is an inspiration, a wink to the audience, rather than a direct portrayal—a reminder that the author is always a ghost in the machine of the story.
The genius of Gorzkowski’s staging lies in the friction between these two layered realities. On one hand, we have the relatable, slightly weary reality of the Reader. On the other, we are thrust into the “highly stylised and very aggressive” world of the crime novel, where every glance holds a secret and every line of dialogue is a potential clue. This isn’t a gentle parody but an embrace of the genre’s inherent theatricality. The characters are vivid archetypes, reminiscent of an Agatha Christie lineup but cranked up to eleven, their flaws exposed under the bright stage lights. The narrative they inhabit is one of heightened drama, where a pending throne of literary supremacy raises the stakes to murderous levels, allowing the play to both celebrate and deconstruct the mechanisms that keep readers turning pages late into the night.
The second source story, “Dress Rehearsal,” introduces a different but thematically linked pressure cooker. It focuses on a couple locked in silent, hostile coexistence, avoiding each other within the confines of their own home. Their strained equilibrium is violently shattered by a mysterious external catastrophe—an explosion, an announced apocalypse—that forces them into strict isolation. This mandatory togetherness acts as a catalyst, intensifying their conflicts until confrontation is inevitable. Gorzkowski points out the uncanny prescience of Tokarczuk’s 2001 text, which describes with “painfully precise” accuracy the relationship dynamics many experienced during the pandemic lockdowns. It explores how, when the distractions of the outside world vanish, we are forced to face the unresolved mysteries and simmering tensions within our own private spheres.
What ultimately binds these two seemingly disparate stories—the crime fiction farce and the claustrophobic relationship study—is a shared emotional core: a profound sense of hopelessness within the mundane. Both the Reader and the quarreling couple are trapped in a stifling normality from which they desperately seek an exit, whether through fantastical literary escapism or through the terrifying clarity of a disaster. “Open Your Eyes” suggests that our responses to life’s disappointments and routines can take many forms, from losing ourselves in fiction to being forced to finally see the truths right in front of us. By fusing these narratives, Gorzkowski creates a multifaceted theatrical experience that is at once a witty genre piece, a commentary on our times, and a triumphant affirmation of the transformative, and sometimes dangerously immersive, power of stories themselves. The play is currently inviting audiences at Warsaw’s Teatr Polski to step into its labyrinth and, as the title implores, open their eyes.
