Theatre
King Gordogan
Kralj Gordogan
Radovan Ivšić · 1968
Synopsis
In a fairy-tale kingdom, the good White King is dead: Gordogan, a former groom, has killed him and seized the throne, then thrown his daughter, Princess Blanche, into prison, intending to have her put to death. He kills his subjects on a whim and the kingdom heads for ruin; the people hope for the coming of a knight. The tyrant's son, Tinatine, disapproves of his father and sets out in search of the princess he loves, among a mysterious justiciar horseman, a jester who is not at all mad, and fairies.
Context
The play was written in Zagreb in 1943 and immediately banned; the ban held under the communists as under the Ustaše, until 1979. It was first heard in France: on national radio in 1956, in a reading at the Avignon festival in 1962, then on stage in 1969 before the ruins of Sade's château at La Coste. The text appeared in Paris in 1968 from the Éditions surréalistes, illustrated by Toyen, and in Croatia only in 1978, in a volume of drama. Vlado Habunek staged it at the Teatar &TD in Zagreb in 1979; one recognises in it Ubu roi, Elizabethan drama and symbolist theatre.
Who it is for
A play in five acts, in an inventive and disconcerting language, to be read as a cruel fable. Translated into French as early as 1968.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most frequently staged and most frequently cited work, revived in 2024 at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb.
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