Lost in translation | 29 March 2008

A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians
Soho Theatre

The Man Who Had All the Luck
Donmar Warehouse

Brave thrusts at the Soho. A wacky new play by Polish wunderkind Dorota Maslowska has been translated and directed by the theatre’s artistic supremo, Lisa Goldman. It opens with a pair of ugly drunken hitch-hikers speaking English in dense Slavic accents. They get a lift from a mild-mannered twit who speaks English in an English accent and after threatening him with murder they set off on a bizarre journey across Poland towards Warsaw. To be properly understood the play requires an exact knowledge of Eastern Europe’s recent history. Migrants from down-and-out Romania have been swarming into prosperous Poland ever since the Berlin Wall came down and complex tensions have emerged between the reluctant hosts and the overeager guests. But these conflicts have absolutely no resonance here and though Goldman tries hard to squeeze Poland’s ethnic contours on to our own it’s like putting a waistcoat on an octopus.

This weird, silly, heartless play is hard to follow, let alone to enjoy, not least because its noisy, vodka-swilling characters are so thoroughly vile and witless. Why stage it at all? Because Poland loved it. Alas, its success has gone to the author’s head. ‘I was 22 when it was proposed to me that I write something for the theatre,’ says Maslowska, rather like a Nobel laureate looking back on a glorious, gong-studded career. She’s 24, and apart from her novel she’s produced a long poem and now this play which shows every sign of being unintelligible outside her homeland. If she returns to the English stage let’s hope she sets herself a higher aim than just amusing herself.

Arthur Miller was also 24 when he wrote The Man Who Had All the Luck.