Reviews:

Teatr Wytwórnia, Warsaw "Beware of the Dogs" by Remigiusz Grzela -- Director: Michał Siegoczyński -- Set design: Wojciech Stefaniak -- Light: Piotr Pawlik -- Music: Zbigniew Bieńkowski -- Cast: Małgorzata Rożniatowska

GRAND PRIX at the Polish Review of Contemporary Solo Plays, Warsaw 2006

GRAND PRIX at the 46th Kalisz Theatre Festival - The Art of Acting 2006

AWARD FROM JOURNALISTS at the 46th Kalisz Theatre Festival - The Art of Acting 2006

THE POLAND MINISTER'S OF CULTURE GRAND PRIX for Małgorzata Rożniatowska at the Competition for The Poland's Modern Plays

THE MAIN AWARD FOR ACTING at the 5th Festival of Premiers in Bydgoszcz

THE DOLNY ŚLĄSK PROVINCE AWARD at the One-Actor Festival WROSTJA in Wrocław

THE WROCŁAW POLISH RADIO AWARD at the One-Actor Festival WROSTJA in Wrocław

"A story like a Stephen King spine-chiller; a house in the middle of nowhere, a helpless writer, immobile as a result of illness and breakdown. His vigorous, sadistic guardian behaves like a monster towards him. However, this is not the mountain wilderness of 'Misery' but the Mazurian town of Zegrzynek. There, in a manor house cut off from the world, Anita Szaniawska confined and maltreated her infirm husband, Jerzy Szaniawski (1886-1970) for several years. The playwright Szaniawski had married the much younger painter at the age of seventy-six. He already had behind him over sixty years of work in literature, national awards and state repression. The author of 'The Barrister and the Roses' and 'father' of Profesor Tutka (a sentimental causeuse from the Polish weekly Przekroj) was, along with Witkacy, the most original writer of the twentieth century interwar period. The communist years destroyed him. Witkacy escaped from the dictatorship of the masses, swallowing veronal and cutting his larynx. Szaniawski, bard of elusive longings, was forced to live in the era of coarse social realism. An era during which the authorities cinsidered poets to be enemies of the people. His dreamy and ideologically strange texts found themselves on the index of forbidden works. However, the real nightmare began in his declining years. Anita walled him up, intercepted his correspondence, deprived him of medicine, beat him, degraded him, fed him with dissolved plaster. After her husband's death, she set fire to the manor (killing two people who were trapped inside) and began to float in and out of psychiatric units. She died in 1991. In Grzela's play, she arrives at a television studio, calm, prepared, supplied with documents and material. A press conference? A board of inquiry? We do not find out. The desk with the microphone on it is as grey and universal as the housing of a computer. From behind such a desk war might be declared, a knockout game show could be run. What is more, the accused does not confess, does not apologise, does not disclaim. She talks of her first feelings as a young girl, of flowers, poems, blue envelopes. At the corners of her mouth lurks a smile of triumph and longing for what she had succeeded in gaining. For a moment she becomes so beautiful and happy that she arouses jealousy." [Joanna Derkaczew, "Gazeta Wyborcza", 6.03.2006]

"A difficult subject but one that theatre really takes to. The story of Jerzy Szaniawski's last years and his wife, Anita, gave rise to a great deal of controversy. But we become acquainted with a version of Anita Szatkowska which is ideally melded with the role's performer, Małgorzata Rożniatowska. This is not just a portrait of a crazed woman persecuting her husband and feeding him of solutions of plaster but a press conference with her participation. As astonishingly calm as if she were sitting in front of a camera, she tells us her own version of events, reads press articles to us; she is concise, calm, distant and only at one moment does she shake us. But in such a way as to suffice! I am hungry for more of Rozniatowska on the stage; she should (!) perform in the theatre as often as possible. However, I have to agree with the director, Michał Siegoczyński, that for the audience there might be too much emotion." [HS, "Wprost i kultura", 13.03.2006]

"Wherever possible as the story flows, the actress's face sets, changes into an animal mask, into the stupified countenance of a catatonic. From smooth sentences, she jumps suddenly into vulgarities, a quickening breath chokes her in mid-word. A grandmother's fairy story changes into a desperate gasp for breath. Music from offstage explodes and, drowned in red light, the madwoman begins to howl a sentimental song into the microphone. Freud was brought up on such female hysteria in the Saltpetriere Clinic in Paris. But what does a modern audience do here. Anita straightforwardly asks 'Did you come to see a loony?' Rożniatowska, known first and foremost for her role in the television serial Złotopolscy turns out to be an extraordinarily sensitive instrument on which the young director, Michał Siegoczyński, has played extreme emotions." [Joanna Derkaczew, "Gazeta Wyborcza", 6.03.2006]

"Małgorzata Rożniatowska sits at a table and speaks into a microphone. She does this so evocatively that we do not realise that an hour has passed. The entire production maintains the structure of a radio play. It has an additional virtue in that one can follow the facial play of the performer. A superb actress." [Janusz R. Kowalczyk, "Rzeczpospolita", 7.03.2006]

"There was not fight for the Grand Prix at this year's Polish Review of Contemporary Solo Plays in Warsaw. Only one production deserved that award; "Beware of the Dogs", performed by Małgorzata Rożniatowska" [Iza Natasza Czapska, "Życie Warszawy", 11.04.2006]

Remigiusz Grzela (born 1977), the author, graduated from Warsaw University's Faculty of Journalism and Political Science. He is the author of the books "Reason Humbled. Interviews with People of Culture" (2000), "Science and Politics. The Strange History of the Philosophy of Law in Poland" (2001), "The Bagagge of Franz K. or A Journey that Never Was" (2004). He is co-author of the book "Chełmska 21" (2001) about the history of the Warsaw film studio situated at that address. He has published two volumes of poetry, "The Banal World. Poetry" (1998) and "Trees Believe Deeply. Poetry" (2001). His poetry has been translated into Norwegian, Hebrew, Italian and English. He hands his interviewing experience on to the students of Warsaw University's Faculty of Journalism and Political Science, where he lecturers in the 'culture of the interview'. His works also include the plays "On the Branch", "Biography" and "The Branded" (English, Italian and German translations) as well as the stage adaptations of: Pedro Almodovar's tale "Patty Diphusa" (the only adaptation of his work in Poland authorised by Almodovar) and Dorothea Kuehl-Martini's roman "Marilyn and the Pope. Letters Between Heaven and Hell", into solo performances for the actress, Ewa Kasprzyk (Teatr Rozmaitości, Warsaw 2004 and Teatr Polonia, Warsaw 2006). He's preparing to publish a roman "Become My God" and a collection of interviews with female artists "Dance on the Border".

Translation: Caryl Swift-Speed.