MR. LADDER’S SENSE OF LIFE

After having staged Alaska Jack (Croatian National Theatre Osijek) and Only God Knows (Theatre Exit), the actor and director Saša Anocic has embarked upon another demanding scenic adventure all the key elements of which (including the final version of the play) developed during the very process of creating the play, predominantly through improvisations and research. The result was Mr. Ladder’s Sense of Life, produced by KNAP. The acronym KNAP has a double meaning: it stands for a theatre on the outskirts of a town as well as for the theatre in the suburban Zagreb district of Pešcenica where, as part of a rich programme of The Cultural Centre of Pešcenica, KNAP has been staging its independent theatre projects for children and adults since 2005. Initially, inspired by a Pythonesque philosophy, Mr. Ladder’s Sense of Life offers a story about an unpretentious, honest, and diligent man who, during a routine medical check-up, is diagnosed with a serious and rare disease. And, that’s when the System gets hold of him and his life, twisting all his acquired concepts on society and his loved ones to absurdity. Superior acting, the complexity of the problems presented and treated, as well as stylistic excellence make Anocic’s tragic grotesque one of the most praised Croatian shows of the season.

Together with his three outstanding actors, the director Saša Anocic has created a rich image of contemporary Croatian grotesqueness, depicting it as an unusual amalgam of a tender and delicate, totally lost and permanently humiliated Fassbinderian petit bourgeois and his hyperbolic Pythonesque behaviour in socially cruel settings of offices, hospitals, the home, and other pillars of society… The superb, artistically incredibly powerful Rakan Rushaidat as the insignificant, greatly humiliated individual of today, is the focus of the show. ... The rampage of grotesquely excessive violence..., the command over mobile props, and the constant changing of masks on the verge of buffoonery performed by Živko Anocic and Radovan Ruždjak, make them respectable opposites yet credible partners of Rushaidat’s complex scenic indignation. Both Anocic i Ruždjak simply bring on stage that which all of us are familiar with from personal experience: the arrogance, cruelty, and misunderstanding of doctors, the exterior saccharine wordiness and the interior betrayal of marital partners, chiefs’ obsessions with seemingly “funny” comments for the purpose of degrading their employees, the hypocrisy of co-workers... During their two-hour performance the actors keep unveiling the audience’s illusions: each scene is a blow to hypocrisy, revealing how we are ready to peacefully accept the public discipline of intimidation, to remain silent and to ungrudgingly tolerate omnipresent violence. I shall not reveal what happens to the unfortunate Mr. Ladder because I would certainly like you to see the show, hoping that its narrative and performative turning points will surprise you. But I do wish to point to Anocic’s presentation of the collision of grotesque and tragic passion that presently has no equal on Croatian stages. In other words, and in the spirit of the play: We are by all means victims of the overall terror of injustice for the sake of “saving” our asses, which leaves us with nothing but to whimper with laughter.
Nataša Govedic, Novi list