The protagonists of The Queen's Peacock are a rather dim-witted bunch whose only dream is to become celebrities (i.e. people known for the fact that they are known). “Game. Set. Match! This premiere at the Nowa Stage of the Stary Theater is like a Wimbledon finals. The quartet of actors dressed in white tennis outfits play a masterful mash-up of Dorota Masłowska and her novel. The words fly about like tennis balls, they zip, curve, smack the viewers in the head, chest, and shoulders, and then fly back into the game. When one of the players' stories drops off, another picks it up immediately. (…) This is not even indoor tennis, it is more like squash, where everything happens faster and faster, there is no room to breathe, the pace and emotion keep accelerating. (…) But what flies into the audience is not tennis balls, but words – and these are bombs with lit fuses. I do not exaggerate,” enthused Łukasz Drewniak in Dziennik Polski. At first the play amuses, as a brash and cheeky joke, but as it goes on it begins to sting. The humor turns frightening…
A new literature, national in every sense of the word, has forced its way into the National Stary Theater, drawing from the finest traditions of street lyrics, uncensored hip-hop, cursing and anarchy, along with ruthless parodies of high Romantic gestures (particularly given the venue) and a concerted energy that draws more from athletics than the theater.(…) I would add this “Peacock” to school and business field trip programs for groups all around Poland. In between a trip to Wawel and a look at Siemiradzki's curtain they could find out how to pop an overinflated balloon (tradition, the high style, higher values) with intelligence, and how liberating this can be.
Joanna Wichowska, e-teatr
Based on the novel by Dorota Masłowska
Directed by: Paweł Świątek
