Xameleon Theatre treat London audiences to a new insight into the life and works of Chekhov in their innovative production Love in a Nutshell at the  Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone. Performed in Russian with English subtitles, the production adapts nine of the playwright’s short stories on the theme of love and marriage, linked by a commentary from…

Marin Sorescu’s Jonah was originally published in 1968 and is considered the playwright’s masterpiece. It’s the famous monologue of the Old Testament fisherman, who endures his dark night of the soul trapped inside a whale. ‘Jonah! Jonah!’, he cries out, first arriving on stage. ‘Actually I myself am Jonah’, he confides to us. ‘I call…

What do we mean by ‘home’? This is the central question posed by Romanian playwright Andreaa Bortun in her play Ashes Afar, recently performed in English at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London’s Belgrave Square. Bortun’s raw and uncompromising script shows us glimpses of the lives of  a migrant couple from two different cultures living…

Scene One: A crowd gets eaten by the roasted chickens and crabs on the banquet table. Scene Two: As a train moves, all that an onscreen silhouette of a man sees is a repetitive countryside landscape saturated with an intense green colour. Yet as soon as the man gets into the city, the landscape becomes…

‘The importance of ordinary people, the everyday, belief in artistic freedom and the rejection of established cinematic norms are some of the principles common to the early work of Czech director Milos Forman and the British Free Cinema movement. This programme, jointly curated with Close-Up and screening from original 16mm and 35mm prints, marks Miloš…

Tomek  is the man who has it all in Slovenian born director Mitja Okorn’s 2016 rom-com Planeta Singli.  Set in Poland, it features a celebrated chat show host with a cult following, Tomek (Maciej Stuhr), who not only has a successful career but also women falling at his feet. Yet clearly there’s also something lacking…

Wanda Jakubowska’s The Last Stage (Ostatni Etap) is one of the world’s earliest feature films about the Holocaust, premiering in Poland as early as March 1948. It’s also a personal narrative: partly based on Jakubowska’s own experiences at Birkenau women’s camp at Auschwitz, The Last Stage chronicles life in the camp from a personal angle, filmed on…

Death doesn’t always put things in perspective, at least not when art is involved. Were it not the last project by one of the 20th century’s great filmmakers, Powidoki, (Afterimage) might have made a respectful turn on the international film circuit before fading into genteel obscurity. With the passing of Andrzej Wajda last year this…

In some ways it may come as a surprise to discover that a film as bizarre as The Last Family (Ostatnia Rodzina) is based firmly on reality, detailing the life of the internationally acclaimed Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski. On the other hand, perhaps the absurdity of it all strikes a bit too close to home to…

Janusz Majewski’s film The Eccentrics (Excentrycy) bagged several awards at the Polish Academy Awards in 2016, including best supporting actor and actress (Wojciech Pszoniak and Anna Dymna), and best film score. Least surprising is the latter, given that it’s a musical comedy, which focuses on a Jazz Big Band in 1950s communist Poland. Fabian Apanowicz…