The Deceased

What happens when a person is mistakenly declared dead? This question could be applied to the fate of the play’s protagonist, Pavle Marić: when he returns to his former environment after a long absence, he is shocked to discover that he has lost not only his wife and his home, but also his fortune and even his scientific work. All of this has been appropriated by his legitimate and less legitimate “heirs”, who are interested in keeping his material and symbolic possessions. They have decided to allow themselves no sympathy in the pursuit of this goal: if the deceased wishes to return to the living, they will jointly declare him a lunatic or a criminal. The whirlwind comedy may begin.  

Branislav Nušić (1864-1938) is probably the most popular Serbian author of all time. He wrote short stories, novellas, serial stories, humorous stories, memoirs, socio-historical plays and pungent political and social comedies. His most far-reaching comedies in the history of Serbian literature and theatre are People’s Deputy, A Suspicious Character, The Cabinet Minister’s Wife, The Bereaved Family and The Deceased. The two never exhausted themes, which he always tackled with humour, are human greed and the lust for power. As he was a master of character comedy, his plays rely on brilliantly written roles. Most of them are embittered portraits of mediocre but aspiring people who are pushing up the social ladder at the expense of others.

The concept of The Deceased, which will be put up on stage for the first time at the Ljubljana City Theatre by Ivan Plazibat (1979), the Croatian director, emerged at the intersection of comedy and social satire. His production will be set in the period between the two world wars, during which Nušić’s last text was written, and will deal with the symptoms of social immorality and corruption. The Deceased can be read as a manual of autocratic regimes on how to treat honest people who still dare to stand up to them. In this sense, it will be both a warning and a challenge: a warning to a society in which injustice and corruption have become a basic principle, and a challenge to ethically persist in such a society.