'Kalkwerk'

Not half an hour ago I walked out of the Gerald Lynch Theater, away from a theatrical piece that I almost didn't want to leave behind; 'Kalkwerk', (or 'Limeworks') directed by Krystian Lupa and performed by the Theater Company Narodowy Stary Teatr, based on the novel by Thomas Bernhard. It was so engrossing that I forgot where I was, I forgot what day it was, and I forgot what I had been doing before I entered the theater. I have rarely experienced such whole immersion in a theatrical piece; usually it will happen when I am watching a complex, emotional, epic film. This astonishing play was four hours long, and at each of the two intermissions, I couldn't believe what had just passed had only been half an hour. What Lupa did with sound/music, with perfectly calibrated actors, with time and the ebb and flow of minute-by-minute existence was beautiful. I made lots of notes, mentally and on paper, and by the end I was overwhelmed with all Lupa had done. There are moments when I recognized myself in the characters, and then moments when I was fascinated with their strangeness. There are scenes like when the main character, a mad scientist in the truest sense of the phrase, drags his wife from her wheelchair to the window so that she can see a little of the sky. Or when his wife, newly draped in a long gown, powders her old, worn face obsessively until she is caked with it and the dust from the powder has all but obscured the actors on the stage. But what I found most impressive was his pacing; there are times when I was so connected to the rhythm of play that I felt (not knew) how the next scene must happen; and, as if by magic, the scene would come, slowly (or rapidly, or rhythmically), the way I hoped and imagined and believed it would. I still cannot quite believe I watched a four-hour play; it was like watching an Apolcalypse Now or a Fitzcarraldo...by the end, I was speechless.