News

Leda, after Miroslav Krleža's drama of the same title, a performance that after more than two decades was staged this spring by Franka Perković at the CNT in Zagreb, will be given at the Slovene Theatre Teatro Capodistria in Koper.

Krleža's drama legacy is rarely on the repertoire of Slovenian theatres, so this guest performance is of great significance for Croatian culture. Continuing good cooperation with Slovenian theatres, our hit performance Leda will be performed in Koper. The guest performance was financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Croatia, said Nenni Delmestre, director of the Drama of the CNT in Zagreb.

In 1930 with Leda, the last drama text of the Glembay cycle (The Glembays, In Agony and Leda), the master of Croatian literature of the 20th century Miroslav Krleža completed the trilogy on the ups and downs of the Zagreb bourgeois family Glembay. The text that the writer first subtitled as a love play, in 1945 skilfully renamed into a comedy about a carnival evening.

The world fraud Oliver Urban (Jerko Marčić), his friend Aurel (Igor Kovač) currently an art critic and successful painter, his wife Klara (Jadranka Đokić), a former opera singer Melita (Iva Jerković Oreški) and her husband, snob Klanfar (Dušan Bućan) in a carnival night expose themselves to the most intimate details through their friendly, marital, extramarital and love relations. Tesa Litvan is Leda, Gloria Dubelj and Iva Šimić Šakoronja ladies and Ivan Colarić the gentleman.

Love couples separate, marriages falter, former lovers meet again and so on indefinitely. Brilliantly written roles, excellent dialogues, intriguing situations and interwoven relationships that vary from a bourgeois drama to vaudeville are only a few elements of this Krleža's only comedy. Yet, Krleža as a great writer, used this fluid structure in order to emphasise all the superficiality, false values and questionable ideals of well-off citizens that are considered to be respectable members of the society.