The Idiots

In the skilful transitions between different levels of fiction […] one play melts into the other, one role into the other, in every actor, her or his 'Trier’s idiot' merges with the 'reality' of the actor, which turns out to be a role for which we can find a different 'reality'. The authentic and mock 'idiots', authentic and mock real persons, but not like a thought that would ground the more witty than dark stage chaos.

We’ve entered a psychological experiment. We are harangued by a literal – synaesthetic –forceful play of impersonation. But what is, in its origin, any entrance into theatre other than these two: an experiment and stepping into another’s shoes. But this time it is (as if) dead serious. The tempo is murderous; the actors fearlessly transgress all borders, without faking. To the edge, to all the edges. Overflowing the edge. […] Not unusual for such daring, uncompromising, in-yer-face theatre.

Therefore, we don’t follow a one-way dramaturgical thread that would focus on von Trier’s story alone; the director – with several inserts – modernises, accentuates and wittily distorts the screenplay from which she originates. She makes the performance unique and spectacular with mass scenes, powerful alternations of slow and fast pace and with radical changes in lighting. Dialects mix, as do the levels of loudness of speech, theatre realities switch, irruptions of the real and so on. These elements don’t hide as integrated parts of the flow of the performance, but rather become visible and emphasised as distinct entities. Nina Rajić Kranjac takes advantage of theatre’s many possibilities and by intertwining of elements and movable stringing of action creates intense dynamics that holds the spectator in constant presence. […]

To let imagination lose and to use all of your physical expressiveness and power to do so, while intertwining individual episodes into an effective and unpredictable stage event is an enormous task that the creative team definitely tackled successfully.