view of the prison and his
role of the jail director
and the hobby of making
origami, in the show is
highlighted by the expressive role of Milos Lalovic
which is set as a grotesque teacher in kindergarten worrying how to
entertain prisoners, giving them cruel “games”
and looking at them as
overgrown children, feeling hurt if these do not
“love” him. Duality is valid on the other side of
the bars, too; even though we don’t fully support any
prisoner, and we know that they are murderers, rapists, thieves or drug dealers, we sympathize with them
and want their sufferings to be eased if eventually there’s no way to end them. We cheer for their escape, althouh we are awere that it is sentenced to failure. Not
even Rat,”Judas”, “Snitch” - the most disgusting figure
of the show - remains with no sympathy from the audience. Especially in the scene where he betrays the
escape plan to Boss, Marko Pavlovic is on the table,
with his back to the audience, holding a paper crane
received from Boss over his head, begging his monologue in which he is mortal in a world of gods who demand absolute obedience, and only occasionally give
the gifts to the mortals, the greatest of all - a few square meters of living.
When impressions after the show settle down, except the verified maxim that cop and felon are two
sides of the same coin, we come to the thought
that since the prison is the embodiment of law the freedom can only exist outside the law. And it is
not only applied to the
prisoners, since the prison life in “The man without mass” is a general
view of the human society where the authority is always achieved
by violence, so the laws
can be prescribed.
The thing we can blame on directors is the
rhythm, which the intensity after a strong
start is falling twice, leaving the audience to
watch the prisoners being bored in their cells,
though this can be understood as an authentic
view of a prison life. The rhythm from the middle of the play to the end raises more and more.
It’s created primarily by acting gig on the stage,
by repeated recitation of why a certain character
is sentenced (“thief”, “murderer”, “whore”) which gets the characteristic of a tribal ritual which
culminates with the cry of “innocent” Laky:”Not
guilty!”, to whom all members of the community
are joined one by one, and then in the choir. The
young and energetic actors’ ensemble deserves
another mention. The oldest is Vladimir Tesovic
playing a boring but also a touching role of Laky,
the only one whose crime, which secured him a
ticket to jail, we don’t know, and who always insists on his innocence, until he gives a mortal punch to Maradona. Through the convincing Tesovic’s representation of the “little man” – the one
who society notes on the street pretty much as
if he were in jail - is given a strong prison image
that shapes a man.
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