Krum, directed by Malgorzata Warsicka, and featured at the Municipal Theater of Białystok-Biala, was chosen as one of the ten best and most important cultural events in Poland in 2021. The prestigious list was published on the last day of 2021 on the leading Polish website ONET.

The play Krum is well known and beloved in Poland due to director Krzysztof Warlikowski’s masterful production of We Are Leaving, which successfully swept the country in 2005. Since that year and until the end of 2021, the overarching reputation of that production deterred producers from staging another work by Levin.

The culture critics of the website ONET explained that, first and foremost they chose the play in recognition of the director Warsitzka’s courage in choosing to stage the play. They noted that she created a pulsating show about emotional emptiness, detachment, and the collapse of the world. She utilized water as a central visual motif, and together with excellent music, precision acting by the cast, and great innovation, she created a show of outstanding relevance in the shadow of the global corona epidemic.

The play’s premier took place on October 2, 2021 at the Municipal Theater of Bielsko-Biala, and performances continued to earn rave reviews.

Director Crosicka, in an interview with the magazine DZIEJE.PL, stated: "Krum is a universal play that touches on the issues we face today. Levin created a play that presents our life ideals:  births, weddings, funerals, careers, children, 'a home with a garden', and raises the question of whether these strivings indeed lead us to happiness."  

She noted that "In this adaptation, I tried to present a perspective from the point of view of Takhtikh , Krum's friend who dies during the play." The play presents a world that no longer exists. We worked on the production for nine months, during which there were two lockdowns. We confronted a strange world that seemed to no longer belong to us. We had no idea how the play would be viewed after the lockdowns. In this work, Levin describes a familiar world that is disappearing without any way to recover it. It is a world that no longer exists, and that is the feeling that Takhtikh conveys. "

Read more about the production here.

Photo: Dorota Kupraska