There’s rats, watch out for them
This year, DAMU is represented by students of the Department of Drama Theatre with a subversive satire called The Beggar's Opera or The Case of the Bouncer. This unexpected syncretism of all possible and impossible genres blurs the boundaries between the fictional world and real, ongoing political controversies.
Labelling The Case of the Bouncer a “musical” is an obvious act of provocation. It is in fact a muddle of many different approaches to staging a performance and is more about playing at a musical than playing a musical. The obvious irony of the authors is evidenced by their perverse decision to stage The Beggar’s Opera as a musical. For, just like a musical, the production can be seen as a cabaret. Not only do the actors use clichés often and nonchalantly, but they also indulge in meta-irony. The conceptual metaphor of the ubiquitous rats fits the performance perfectly. At the beginning of the performance, exterminators in hazmat suits look somewhat cryptic, but at the end it turns out that the pests indeed were present among the audience.
The topics of the original libretto are undoubtedly timeless, and the combination of some of the motifs with the specifically Czech contexts of political campaigns, foundations and political controversies more than once made the home audience explode with laughter.
These stories from the mafia underworld were complemented by an elaborate set design. The smoking sewer, the yellow container, and the twilight sky above the stage perfectly added to the atmosphere of the plot. The transitions between scenes, the acting style and the mise-en-scene work strongly resembled the playful style of a comic book, and in many ways the theatrical special effects parodied film special effects. The music itself complemented the text perfectly: you can hear the generic musical clichés, cringe rap battles, disco music, and dubious love rhapsodies.
