A masterpiece at the National. A masterpiece of persuasion and bewitchment. Croatian word-athlete Tena Stivicic has miraculously convinced director Howard Davies that she can write epic historical theatre. And Davies has transmitted his gullibility to Nicholas Hytner, who must have OK’d this blizzard of verbiage rather than converting it into biofuel and sparing us a hideous Balkans ballyhoo.
Certainly the play is conceived on a grand scale. Location: a Zagreb mansion. Timeline: 1945 to 2011. Characters: several generations of clever proles plus one dangling aristo. It opens on a note of sourness and corruption. A blonde Marxist stunnah seduces a top commissar who buys her off with the freehold to a townhouse occupied by some rich bloodsuckers. The snooty vermin are kicked out. Enter the noble plebs. They’re all in favour of communal ownership except when it comes to communal ownership of something they want. Like the house. A flappy young heiress, made homeless by the new arrivals, asks permission to squat in her former bedroom, and she’s grudgingly allowed to remain so long as she pays her way by stitching the boots of the downtrodden poor.
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