3 Winters review – Croatian family drama pierces the fog of history
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/dec/04/3-winters-lyttelton-london-review
Tena Štivičić’s play about three crucial dates in her country’s past is a demanding but fascinating experience
Some plays are instantly accessible; others require patience. This new play by the Croatian writer Tena Štivičić is one of the latter but it amply repays perseverance since this story of a Zagreb house and its tenants over 70 years offers a fascinating portrait of the need to adapt and survive in a country in a constant state of transition.
The focus is on the Kos family at three crucial dates in Croatian history. In 1945 we see Rose, with her mother, husband and their baby daughter, Masha, moving into a partitioned house at the time of the victory of Tito’s communist partisans. By 1990 Masha and her history-teacher husband, Vlado, are occupying the same house, with their young daughters, at the very moment when Croatia and Slovenia are about to break up the dominant Yugoslavian communist regime. Finally we meet the Kos family in 2011 when Masha’s youngest daughter, Lucia, is about to marry a dodgy entrepreneur and Croatia is on the brink of joining the capitalist club of the European Union.
Several factors make this a tricky play to absorb: our own hazy knowledge of Croatia’s past, the way Štivičić shuffles the chronology and the strange decision in Howard Davies’s otherwise excellent production not to label each scene: we deduce the time period from the film footage projected on to the sliding screens of Tim Hatley’s set.
But what emerges, with unequivocal clarity, is the way political events shape personal relationships and the capacity of women to adjust to history’s hardships. Masha becomes a pivotal figure who, in spite of her problematic parentage, becomes the glue holding the family together and tries to instil in her daughters “a sense of owning their destiny”. She only partly succeeds but this leads to a tremendous showdown between the pragmatic Lucia and her sister, Alisa, who returns from doing her PhD in London to register her moral horror at the steps taken to hang on to the family house.
Sophie Rundle as the strenuously practical Lucia and Jodie McNee as the sexually equivocal Alisa play this last scene with tremendous force. It is an evening dominated by fine female performances: Siobhan Finneran as the secretly unhappy but stoically resolute Masha, Lucy Black as her domestically abused sister, Jo Herbert as the fiercely partisan Rose, and Susan Engel as an aristocratic survivor of the pre-communist era all impress.
This is a big play that shows how family lives are determined by history and, even if it requires concentration, it’s worth arriving early and studying the programme to grasp the background to Stivicic’s richly complex mosaic.
Until 3 February. Box office: 020-7452 3000. Venue: National Theatre
Michael Billington
http://www.theguardian.com/profile/michaelbillington
Michael Billington (critic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Billington_%28critic%29
Michael Keith Billington OBE (born 16 November 1939) is a British author and arts critic. Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts…
Billington was made an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford in 2005 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by The University of Warwick in July 2009.
He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to the theatre
photos
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Sophie Rundle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Rundle
Sophie Rundle (born 1988) is an English actress best known for her recurring role as Labia in the British/American television sitcom Episodes and as code-breaker Lucy, in the ITV drama series The Bletchley Circle.
On December 2014, she played Lucia Kos in a new play titled 3 Winters by London-based Croatian playwright Tena Štivičić, about the Kos family, living at three crucial periods in Croatian history. The play is directed by Howard Davies at the National Theatre
photos
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Jodie McNee
http://www.rsc.org.uk/explore/blogs/pathways-to-shakespeare/jodie-mcnee/
photos
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Siobhan Finneran
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siobhan_Finneran
Siobhan Finneran (born 2 January 1966) is an English television and film actress. She is known for her regular roles in the BBC drama Clocking Off (2000-2002), ITV comedy Benidorm (2007-2015), ITV drama Downton Abbey (2010-2013) and BBC drama Happy Valley (2014). She also starred as Rita in the 1986 film, Rita, Sue and Bob Too and as Mrs. Swift in the 2013 film, The Selfish Giant.
photos
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photos Lucy Black
https://www.google.hr/search?q=Lucy+Black&client=opera&hs=1qe&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=V2aEVLb1JqP9ywPst4L4Dg&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=931&bih=600
photos Jo Herbert
https://www.google.hr/search?q=Jo+Herbert&client=opera&hs=fYz&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=6GaEVLXtBuTMyAP1r4CQDw&ved=0CB0QsAQ&biw=931&bih=600
Susan Engel
(born 25 March 1935 in Vienna, Austria) is a British actress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Engel
photos
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Howard Davies (director)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Davies_%28director%29
Stephen Howard Davies CBE (born 26 April 1945) is a British theatre and television director
photos
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