Hanoch Levin
Winter Wedding
The night before a wedding, the proud mother Shratzia, who is about to give away her daughter VelvetSia in marriage
to PopoTchenko, is awakened by a violent knock at the door. The loud and persistent knocking wakes up everyone: the betrothed couple, the future parents-in-law, and even Rashes, Shratzia’s greedy husband, ready to open the door instantly. Shratzia, a know-it-all, reckons it must be drunkards or bearers of bad news causing a racket in the middle of the night, so she orders to keep the door shut. She has been preparing for the forthcoming wedding, to which she invited two hundred guests, her entire life. She cannot possibly have bad news ruin or even postpone the wedding ceremony.
Halvaja horpit, 1979
Black comedy
First Slovenian production
Performance length is 2 hours and 15 minutes and has 1 pause.
Creators
Translator
Klemen Jelinčič Boeta
Director
Matjaž Zupančič
Dramaturg
Ira Ratej
Set designer
Janja Korun
Costume designer
Bjanka Adžić Ursulov
Composer
Jani Kovačič
Choreographer
Veronika Valdes
Language consultant
Martin Vrtačnik
Lighting designer
Andrej Koležnik
Sound designer
Gašper Zidanič
Assistent to director
Maruša Sirc
Actors
Latshek Boobitchek
Lotos Vincenc Šparovec
Alteh Boobitchek
Viktorija Bencik Emeršič
Shratzia
Iva Krajnc Bagola
Rashes
Jožef Ropoša
Velvetsia
Lara Wolf k. g.
Tsitskeva
Mirjam Korbar
Baragontseleh
Gašper Jarni
Popotchenko
Tomo Tomšič
Prof. Kipernai
Jaka Lah
Rosenzweig
Mojca Funkl
Lichtenstein
Nina Rakovec
Angel Samuel
Gal Oblak k. g.
Shahmandrina
Matic Lukšič
Pshoshitsia
Viktorija Bencik Emeršič
As it happens, Shratzia is right again. The person knocking at the door is Latshek Boobitchek, the son of her cousin Alteh Boobitchek who passed away the night before. Latshek Boobitchek had promised his dying mother she would be send off on her final journey by all her relatives. That is why he is knocking so relentlessly and yelling that the funeral will take place tomorrow afternoon – the very day of the wedding. Everyone in the house goes into hiding and sneak away furtively to the seashore in the middle of the night, hoping that Latshek will not trace them.
Running away from bad news turns into a flight from death. Some of the wedding guests fail to escape it, because the cold, the snow and exertion have taken its toil, and they end up ushered to the afterlife by the angel Samuelov. Who is to win this contest of two rituals? The wedding or the funeral?
Hanoch Levin is considered one of Israel’s most famous and original playwrights. Winter Wedding is his third play to be staged in our theatre. A play of extreme complexity, laying bare human shallowness, meanness and gluttony with humour and poignancy, will be directed by Matjaž Zupančič. In 2011, he staged in our theatre Levin’s final play Requiem to critical and popular acclaim.