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GO WITH GOD, YUGOSLAVIA!

Goodbye SFRY, directed by: Kokan Mladenović, produced by: Atelje 212

By: Vanja Nikolić

Goodbye is a departing greeting and it means ‘’go with God’’. SFRY is short for the Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. That State did not recognise God and it excluded the Church from its system. In our society, the word goodbye has no religious connotation in everyday speech. It is used to say goodbye to someone when we are leaving. In the theatre, on the other hand, each word has a meaning and a reason why it is said, or it should be like that. That is why it is important to analyse and question everything regarding the new play at the Atelje 212 Theatre, Goodbye SFRY, which opened the season of Utopia, because the director did not do anything of the sort as part of his process of exploring and creating. The author of the text and the director, Kokan Mladenović claims that while writing and directing his inspiration was Wolfgang Izer. Everyone who saw the movie Good Bye, Lenin realised that he was not inspired by the author, but by the movie. He copied the story, in a different time, different state, among different characters. This makes the main problem of this play.

Comrade Jovanka suffers a heart-attack after which she falls into a coma, just like the main character in the movie. They stay in a coma for the same period of time and when they awake, the system in which they believed in and worked for with all their being, no longer exists. Yugoslavia is no more, as well as the Berlin Wall, there is no more State and politics for which they lived for. Mladen, Jovanka’s son, starts to create illusions that everything his mother believed in still exists. He uses similar means as in the movie, searching for products that can no longer be bought, making up and filming news that will explain the changes his mother has noticed and persuading his neighbours and friends to play the game of creating an unreal reality. Both mothers die, realising that everything is changed, but before they die, they tell their children the truths about their fathers.

The story is the same. What is different is the context and the political background. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Berlin and Germany were united. For the Eastern Germany that meant a new capitalist order and expected development. The author of the movie faces two systems, socialism and capitalism very explicitly and Alex defends his mother from capitalism and tries to keep her in socialism. The humour of these scenes, which can only be achieved in a movie by its technical means, creates criticism of the two social rules.

When Yugoslavia fell apart, which was, unlike Eastern Germany, considered to be a country of wealth and prosperity, all of its flaws surfaced and resulted in a civil war. This was a conflict of two worlds, a utopia in which the mother believes in and the reality of the 90’s war that can, at he very best, be labelled as black humour. Hence, it is impossible to draw a comparison between Yugoslavia and Germany, because such an assumption would create a contrary effect to the expected one. With the banal transfer of the story into a different context, we can not achieve a comic situation, or a similar questioning of ideology or of a political system. This only creates an uneven whole in which comic scenes give an impression of forcedly implemented TV sketches and the rest tackles the unclear political and ideological attitude of the director. The confusion creates an image of Yugoslavia as an ideal country, the war in the 90’s as an unavoidable evil and the ruling political system as a topic for judgement and criticism. It remains unclear from which angle the director speaks from and ‘’who rthe bad guys and the good guys are’’. The director develops too many unclear, unwise and opposite political views that can be seen in the uneven style of actors’ performance.

Beside the director’s unclear point, some of the actors have managed to follow the nature of the play. Although not all of them. Jadranka Mitić, played by Dara Džokić, does not enhance the love for her homeland and manages to avoid the elements of pathology, for which she has plenty of material in the text. Similar can be said for Renata Ulmanski and Nenad Ćirić, while Miodrag Krivokapić with his two roles, mixes the two natures. His doctor is an unclear caricature, with an attempt to emphasise the lack of care at work that should provoke laughter with the audience, while the colonel is a man ruined by the change of the system and ends up on the street hungry, in personal and professional ruin. The younger actors, more or less, literally struggle with their characters. Miloš Biković as the son seems to run through the stage in order to keep the pace of the game, which brings him to melodramatic overacting. The actresses Hana Selimović and Tanja Petrović managed better in their roles of Zvezdana and Una, in which each has her own way of dealing with problems, Una with rebellion and protest, Zvezdana finding an easier but longer way around. The clearest characters are those of Marinko Madžgalj and Nenad Ćirić. They use over-emphasis to create caricatures of comical Garijo and Miloš. The best performances are those of the children Jelena Blagojević and Uroš Rakić whose ease and convincing honesty as Tito’s pioneers, express children’s’ naivety that functions perfectly.

The naivety is present in the director’s attempt to transfer the story from one media into another and while at it, not to consider all possible consequences of such a procedure. The mistakes and lack of logic in the text, the inconsistent and messy flash-backs, function as bad motivation for the characters, making them unconvincing. The director’s mistakes are an attempt of mixing non-functional songs at the beginning and at the end, of creating serious characters and mostly easy comedy to entertain the masses. This creates confusion and a feeling that a serious social and political topic was chosen and used in a very banal way. The only thing that we said goodbye to after this play, is the possibility for it to successfully mark the upcoming season.