There's laughter in the Balkans

10 April 2012

War in Kosovo has given Hungarian writer Hristo Boytchev's scattergun satire on Balkan politics a timely edge it might otherwise lack. The Colonel Bird is an absurdist romp in which six lunatics declare that their forgotten asylum, a derelict monastery near the Serbian border, is an independent territory, and appoint themselves as a "UN fighting force". The situation is fine and funny, and very ably served by director Rupert Goold and translator Judith Spostra-nova, but Boytchev's targets seem disturbingly vague.

Of course, that might just be my own ignorance of the Hungarian situation talking. As one of Boytchev's madmen says when British planes deliver him and his cohorts UN aid parcels meant for Kosovo: "They don't know the difference. It is all 'the Balkans' to them."

The madman in question is an ex-soldier, who became an actor despite being sent stone deaf by an exploding shell. Every day he supplies identical dialogue to silent TV news bulletins to distract his colleagues from their obsessions. There's an alcoholic kleptomaniac, a man convinced he's only three inches tall, and a once-priapic Gypsy Corporal who now can't stand to attention. He begs for treatment for his penile dementia from a former prostitute who is atoning to God for each of the 28,375 men she slept with.

There's no food, no medicine, and their doctor is actually a depressive morphine addict who faked his qualifications to get the keys to the drugs cabinet. When the UN drops some uniforms on them, the sixth inmate emerges from his catatonic anonymity as the Colonel, and begins to instil military discipline and a mad sense of mission in the inmates.

Same asylum, different lunatics, seems to be Boytchev's view of all forms of Balkan authority. He has a similarly cynical attitude to the effectiveness of peace-keepers: the nervous prostitute is assured that Nato privates are impotent. A late convert to theatre after a career in engineering, Boytchev makes gauche references to Shakespeare and Brecht but his play, unburdened with notions of dramatic propriety, has a vivid, brute energy.

Rupert Goold draws splendidly manic performances from his cast, with Jonathan Aris delightfully dry as the fake doctor, Damian Myerscough authoritative as the Colonel, and recent drama-school graduates Tobias Menzles and Danny Babington oddly touching as the deaf actor and the size-obsessed Titch. Tim Shortall's set is a masterpiece of invention, capturing the skewed logic and haunted shadows of a nightmare. The targets may be indistinct, but the atmosphere of manic absurdity is well worth sampling.

The Colonel Bird

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