Theatre
Pustolov pred vratima
Not translated into English
Milan Begović · 1926
Synopsis
A young girl condemned by illness dreams, on the terrace of a villa, of the love she will not have known. A stranger appears, who takes on nine faces in turn and offers to grant her last wish; each is the figure of a desire, and one never knows whether what happens takes place or is dreamed. The sick girl's last hours pass in this way, between lucidity and delirium.
Context
The play, a tragicomedy in nine tableaux, was written in 1925 and premiered on 9 January 1926 on the main stage in Zagreb; its author had just returned from Germany and Austria, where he had spent several years staging productions, and the following year took over the direction of the stage that had premiered it. The character who drives the action is Death, whom the same actor plays under nine other faces. The construction owes something to psychoanalysis, to Hauptmann and to Pirandello: almost everything takes place in the consciousness of the sick woman, and nothing allows one to separate what happens from what is dreamed. Its author considered it his most intimate dramatic work. Two adaptations were made of it in the same year, in 1961, by two different directors, and the main stage in Zagreb restaged it in 2023.
Who it is for
A one-evening play, with no difficulty of language, but one that asks the reader to accept not always knowing what is taking place. No French edition exists.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most frequently performed play, adapted twice in 1961 and revived in 2023 by the country's leading drama company.
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