The digital magazine of New York indie theater
Loading

Letter from Poland

nytheatre.com review by Lauren Marks
August 15, 2005

Letter from Poland is not at all what I expected. The very idea of letters from Poland seems to immediately conjure, unbidden, images of death-camps, barbed-wire buildings, and shrunken, starved rows of men. And a letter? I can only imagine before seeing this show, the letter is the last relic someone has of a relative, a victim or a survivor of Nazi internment. So I can’t help thinking directly before I step down into the theatre, “Can I really handle a letter from Poland right now?”Turns out, Letter From Poland, is not about Nazis or any kind of human atrocities. It is, in fact, a comedy of sorts. It is a one-man show, in which author/performer Michael Doyle details his experience traveling to Poland, on a grant in order to study experimental theater, specifically the legacy of legendary Polish artist Jerzy Grotowski. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned for Michael, and he ends up trapped in a hostel with a broken ankle and behind a wall of snow, isolated from the town. But Michael’s real problem is that his grant money is going to run out while he is in the hostel, before he’s had a chance to study the theatre he came to write about.Michael puts himself in the hot seat as he re-enacts for the audience the combination of panic bordering on hysteria over losing his grant and his starved-for-companionship cabin fever. It is then that a visiting group of nuns visit the hostel and soon ask Michael to direct them in an adaptation of the Good Samaritan story from the Gospels. He speaks as little Polish as they do English, but he sees the play as his last chance to create something that might persuade the foundation to keep funding him. Naturally, things get lost in translation, and occasional wackiness ensues.The acting and staging might have done more to reflect Grotowski’s work, considering how often he's referenced in the play. This play is not in the genre of Grotowski’s “poor theatre,” a theatre of intense physical expression and of objects which constantly transmute into new objects, depending upon how the performer approaches them. However, it certainly possesses its own language of theatricality. And, with the audience awareness that this is a true story, there is the natural voyeuristic interest in seeing Michael Doyle perform scenes from his own life.By the end of his time with traveling nuns, and the strangely fated production of "The Good Samaritan," Michael seems dejected, sure he is bound to lose his grant without being witness to any of the essential works, being done so nearby. It is then that a nun, whom he is clearly enamored with, leaves a letter with him to send to his foundation. It asks that they please not revoke his funding and says that he has done a group of nuns a great service as their director. It is especially poignant when she says that the production he directed in Poland will travel to Africa, to be part of the missionaries’ work to help curb the spread of AIDS. The message hits Michael as it hits the audience—we do not always have the presence of mind to see when we are part of something essential.