Nicola Werenowska's play about Polish emigres is a strangely unsympathetic piece. When people hate themselves and their families and their culture as much as battered Marysia hates her life, her visiting sister Anya, and their family in Poland who were ashamed that she gave birth to an illegitimate son, there is nowhere to go in narrative terms. So we have her rather perplexingly pushed back into the arms of the man who glassed her face in front of her then very young, son.
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| Split and Polish |
If this sounds unsatisfactory, it is. Marysia is cold and unsympathetic and impossible to like. Her inanely grinning sister is a cross between a scrounger and a therapist and speaks in Polish half the time. Marysia's love for her teenage son - who has the voice and appearance of a young organic farmer fed on wild boar while hefting hay bales - is evident but unreliable, given her coldness.
Quite what Werenowska wants us to take away from this static story, beyond a suggestion that Poles are racist, mean, selfish and unfriendly, is uncertain. The changing focus - from the plight of new immigrants to issues around domestic violence, to the relationship between the sisters, and the collusive interactions between Anya and her nephew, Kuba - means nothing is explored properly.
In conclusion: It's great to have new writing about London's Polish community, and this will hopefully attract new audiences with a vested interest, but as a play, it looks and feels too much like a storyboard than a full drama.
References:
Hampstead Theatre,
tickets
Hampstead Theatre is on Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 3EU. This production is now over.
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