Ivar Kreuger and Jeanne de la Motte: Two Plays by Jerzy W. Tepa

By Intellect Books Ltd

The 1930s were a period of triumph and turmoil in Poland, yet the decade saw the production of a number of exceptional dramatic works. Some dramatists of the period, among them Jerzy Tepa, are not well-known today because many of their plays were lost, or presumed to be lost, during the war years. However, the recent rediscoveries of Tepa’s Ivar Kreuger andJeanne de la Motte allow a fascinating glimpse into a rich and vital period of Polish literary culture unfamiliar to most English readers and scholars. This book not only introduces Tepa and his work to new readers but also demonstrates why he was one of the leading voices of the Polish interwar era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books Ltd
• Release date: Jan 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781783204328

Book preview

Introduction

The years immediately following World War I were a time of great change and upheaval in Poland: an estimated one million Poles had lost their lives in the war; Poland’s borders were redrawn yet again after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the defeat of the Red Army during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920; and the country struggled to rebuild its economy and its state institutions. Toward the end of the 1920s, however, relative calm seemed to have set in, with the economy stabilizing and the cultural and intellectual life prospering. But that calm would turn out to be short-lived.

The 1930s proved to be an even more remarkable period of triumph, turmoil, and turbulence, all of which were reflected in the literature of the day. As E. J. Czerwiński noted, that literature was marked by an interest in social and economic problems, exacerbated by the Great Depression of 1929.¹ The prominent genre was the novel, with such truly monumental works as Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke (1937), Bruno Schulz’s Sanatorium pod klepsydrą (The Sanitarium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, 1937), and Józef Wittlin’s Sól ziemi (Salt of the Earth, 1936), all of which were bold experiments in form that broke from traditional mirror-of-life fiction and challenged conventional thought. In the bitterly comic Ferdydurke, a writer finds himself tossed by his diabolical professor Pimko into a chaotic world of schoolboys who try to reduce him into childishness and then into a seemingly enviable life on a progressive Warsaw estate. The novel portrays a society so circumscribed by absurd rules and codes of conduct that true individuality is impossible to achieve. As Gombrowicz himself observed, the novel was not just a satire on a social class or a nihilistic attack on culture but rather a new form by which to crystallize the violent changes and accelerated development of the age, in which settled forms are breaking under life’s pressure. Similarly, Schulz’s Sanatorium pod klepsydrą, like his earlier Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops, 1934), was a fantastic, surrealistic work in which familiar objects are distorted and ordinary people transfigured. A dreamlike poetic recollection about his father, his family, and his life in the modest Jewish quarter of Drohobych where he was born and died, Schulz’s book blurred the line between fact and imagination and forced the reader to reimagine his own reality. And Wittlin’s Sól ziemi, which brilliantly balanced the comic with the tragic, warned of the extermination of native culture: the simple illiterate Hutsul peasant Piotr Niewiadomski (a name meaning Unknown) is thrust into a strange new world and forced to confront the brutality and absurdity of war. Buffeted by forces that he cannot understand, much less control, the detached and bewildered Piotr becomes a twentieth-century Everyman.

It was not just the novel, though, that challenged traditional notions of order and that offered valuable insights into the spirit of the times. A number of exceptional dramatic works, many of which continue to be read, revived, and admired today, also appeared during those years—works such as Gombrowicz’s first play, Iwona, księżniczka Burgunda (Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, 1938). Like Ferdydurke and much of Gombrowicz’s other writing, Iwona was a study of the collective weakness of a society that forbids deviation from the norm and creates patterns that stifle authentic and individual expression. Expected to marry a woman of great beauty and intelligence, the crown prince instead meets an ugly, listless, and expressionless girl who suffers from sluggish blood and never utters a word. After he introduces her as his fiancée, she so unsettles everyone at the palace by her presence that they begin to reveal their own prejudices and sadistic impulses; and ultimately they dispose of Iwona, who threatens both their thinking and their way of life, by feeding her an unboned fish that causes her to choke and die.

Another outstanding and innovative playwright was Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (popularly known as Witkacy), a prolific artist and author who wrote around thirty plays. A radical thinker, Witkacy was a proponent of Pure Form in art—that is, of a new form that was abstract and pure, without associations with objects in the external world. He recognized that since theater is a composite art and since action must be performed by characters, no matter how strange or improbable they might be, absolute Pure Form in the theater was impossible. Yet he believed that some elements of it could be achieved even there, at the price of a deformation of psychology and action. In his own theater work, he attempted to enlarge the possibilities of composition by abandoning familiar logic and introducing instead a fantastic psychology and fantastic action, in order to win complete freedom of formal elements.² The quest for Pure Form led Witkacy to distort language and invent absurd situations; yet those very elements that made his dramatic work so modern often confounded contemporary theatergoers. Nonetheless, his work was undeniably inventive and influential. Sonata Belzebuba (The Beelzebub Sonata, 1925), for instance, a contemporary version of the Faust story in which a musician commits suicide after completing his sonata and thus exhausting his creativity, predated Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus by two decades. And Witkacy’s final dramatic work Szewcy (The Cobblers, 1931–1934), which relied not on naturalistic technique but rather on macabre metaphors, was a parable of intellectual and moral decay and of two successive revolutions: one fascist, the other Marxist.³

Other playwrights whose names are less familiar to readers today than Gombrowicz’s or Witkacy’s made significant contributions to the Polish drama of that era as well. Maria Dąbrowska, for example, author of the acclaimed four-volume historical novel Noce i dnie (Nights and Days, 1932–1934), also wrote two historical plays. Lwów-born Stanisława Przybyszewska, daughter of prolific writer and famed aesthetician Stanisław Przybyszewski, is remembered for Thermidor, Dziewięćdziesiąty trzeci (The Ninety-Third), and Sprawa Dantona (The Danton Affair), which became widely known after it was adapted by Andrzej Wajda, as the film Danton, in 1983. Tadeusz Peiper, a noted aesthetic theoretician, displayed his devotion to the avant-garde not only through his poetry but also with his dramatic works Szósta! Szósta! (Sixth! Sixth!, 1925) and Skoro go nie ma (Since He’s Not Here, 1933). And Jerzy Szaniawski, in a series of successful stage plays including Ptak (Bird, 1923), Żeglarz (Sailor, 1925), and Adwokat i róże (Attorney and Roses, 1929), integrated dreams and reality, the magical and the quotidian.

Another young Polish playwright, Jerzy W. Tepa, also came to prominence during these years. The son of Włodzimierz and Antonina Tepa, he was born in Lwów, Poland, in 1908. After completing gimnazjum in Chyrów, he moved to Paris to pursue studies at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales. There he began writing short translations as well as articles and theater reviews for the Paris press. After returning to Poland around 1930, he settled in Lwów, where he was hired as one of a select group of announcers (later becoming chief of programming) at the newly established Polish Radio Lwów, located at 6 Batory. The station quickly developed a large and loyal following; its popularity, in fact, was second only to that of Radio Warsaw. Radio Lwów’s innovative and original broadcasts included the legendary Wesoła Lwowska Fala (Lwów’s Merry Wave), a program of humorous sketches, songs, music, and satire featuring the comedy duo of Szczepcio (Kazimierz Wajda) and Tońko (Henry Vogelfänger), who performed their amusing dialogues in the Lwowian dialect, along with an ensemble of other talented performers. Recognized countrywide, Wesoła Lwowska Fala was among the most successful programs ever aired on Polish Radio. Reportedly it reached as many as six million listeners each week and—like many of the other original programs broadcast by Radio Lwów—is still remembered and celebrated in Poland today. Czesław R. Halski, the distinguished musicologist and former announcer at Radio Lwów, recalled that the station’s broadcasts served a unique and vital role in Polish culture by preserving much of Lwów’s language, texts, songs, and jokes, most of which—in light of the political events that followed—might otherwise have been lost.

Figure 1: A broadcast at Polish Radio Lwów (1932). Tepa, standing with arms outstretched, is at the upper right.

It was in 1933, while working at Radio Lwów, that twenty-four-year-old Jerzy Tepa made his theatrical debut with Fräulein Doktor. Lwów’s Teatr Wielki had accepted the play a mere two days after its submission. To accommodate the premiere, the theater immediately reshuffled its schedule for the new season and began casting all of the roles in secret, as a way of generating suspense about the upcoming production.

The title role went to Irena Eichlerówna, the acclaimed actress considered to be Poland’s Eleonara Duse, who, in fact, Tepa had in mind for the part when he originally wrote it. Possessed of an unusually broad vocal range, Eichlerówna was known for using her voice to bring subtle nuances to the characters she played. Her adeptness at interpreting her roles with clarity and sensitivity allowed her to create deep, rich psychological portraits of her heroines: Zosia in Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady (Forefather’s Eve, 1929), Crazy Julia in Jan August Kisielewski’s W Sieci (In the Net, 1929), Turandot in Carlo Gozzi’s Turandot (1930), Katie Pearl in Gordon Abbott and Philip Dunning’s Broadway (1930), Joanna in Stanisław Wyspianski’s Noc listopadowa (November Night, 1930), Salome in Oscar Wilde’s Salome (1930), and Panna Maliczewska in Gabriela Zapolska’s Panna Maliczewska (Miss Maliczewska, 1932). After moving from Warsaw to Lwów to work in the Municipal Theaters that were managed, at the time, by renowned writer and stage director Wilam Horzyca, Eichlerówna appeared in salon comedies as well as in several sensational productions directed by Wacław Radulski. But it was Fräulein Doktor Anna Marie Lesser, a part specifically tailored to her talents, that gave her the role of a lifetime; and after creating the part in Lwów, she went on to perform it in Warsaw, where both she and the play continued to garner critical and public acclaim.

Figure 2: Acclaimed actress Irena Eichlerówna in the title role of legendary spy Fräulein Doktor Anna Marie Lesser.

Also cast in the original production of Fräulein Doktor were such fine stage actors as Lucjan Żurowski, Leszek Stępowski, and Jerzy Chodecki, all of whom found minor success in films over the years (Żurowski, in Z dnia na dzien, Huragan, and Noc listopadowa; Stępowski in Geniuz sceny; Chodecki in Love or a Kingdom, Czarne diamenty, and Granica). And actors Jan Guttner and Józef Machalski offered strong performances in supporting roles. The entire cast, in fact, worked with a seamless grace that reminded at least one reviewer of a fine concert orchestra.

Figure 3: The original cast of Fräulein Doktor at the Teatr Wielki in Lwów (1933). Author Jerzy Tepa is seated third from right.

Figure 4: Janusz Warnecki, the original director of Fräulein Doktor.

The play was directed by Janusz Warnecki, a frequent collaborator with Polish Radio, who would go on to manage major theaters in Warsaw, Lwów, and Krakow. Well known as a stage actor and as the director of films such as Noc listopadowa (retitled Księżna Łowicka [Duchess Łowicka], 1932) and Każdemu wolno kochać (Love Is for Everyone, 1933), Warnecki was widely praised for his direction of Fräulein Doktor. Critics noted that he maintained an excellent tempo throughout the entire production and invested even the simplest scenes with enormous tension and emotion. And scenarist and artist Otto Rex (pseudonym of Otto Axer), the son of a music school owner in Lwów, designed spectacular yet minimalist sets that were modernistic in the interior scenes, realistic in the battle scenes.

Based on the life of Anna Marie Lesser, Fräulein Doktor dramatized the adventures of the legendary spy. In the play, Lesser—using both her cleverness and her sexuality—engages in daring acts of espionage in the years between 1913 and 1918. Her secret missions take her from Berlin and Brussels to Verdun and Paris and ultimately back to Berlin, where her morphine addiction and her remorse over the deaths she has caused finally take a toll and cause her collapse. The play, however, does not merely recount Lesser’s wartime heroism; it also depicts a young woman at war with herself. By turns so idealistic that she is willing to risk her life for a patriotic purpose and yet so hardened by life that she sees no purpose at all, Lesser is a fascinating study in contradictions.

Figures 5-6: Photographs from the premiere performance of Fräulein Doktor (1933) at the Teatr Wielki in Lwów, showing some of Otto Rex's innovative stage designs.

Fräulein Doktor proved to be an unprecedented success, hailed by critics and loved by audiences. Over the next year, it set new records for continuous theatrical performances.⁴ Moreover, as contemporary reviewers observed, its impact was worldwide: within months of its premiere in Lwów, productions of Fräulein Doktor were mounted throughout Poland and in Rumania, France, Spain, Canada, and the United States, and the play was translated into numerous languages, including English, French, Spanish, even Yiddish. It also attracted the attention of studio heads at both Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount, who began negotiating for film rights.

That interest was hardly surprising, since Fräulein Doktor, which Tepa called a faktomontaż (montage of facts), seemed particularly well suited to screen adaptation. Not only did the play take an innovative approach to its subject, it was also fast-paced and cinematic in its structure, with its six acts divided into six self-contained scenes that played out over six years in different European locations.⁵ Several reviewers, in fact, commented on this cinematic quality and insisted that the play was more imaginative and filmic than spy movies such as Under Two Flags (1922) and Mata Hari (1931). (This cinematic quality would become one of the defining characteristics of Tepa’s dramatic works.)

A historical drama, Fräulein Doktor was surprisingly timely as well. At the same time that it evoked strong memories of World War I, it also stirred very real concerns about the contemporary political climate, especially about single-minded devotion to duty and to nationalistic causes (the consequences of which, as historical events over the next decade confirmed, proved more tragic than any dramatist could have imagined). Theater critic and fellow dramatist Henryk Zbierzchowski applauded the way that the play’s events cleverly captured the sense of both the years of the Great War and the rise of Hitler in the early 1930s (evoked most directly by the appearance of the storm troopers in the final scene). Henryk Hescheles, editor of the newspaper Chwila, admired the many inventive elements of the work, which he felt were delivered with a confidence and artistry unusual for such a young playwright. Both agreed that Tepa, one of Lwów’s most popular broadcasters, had established himself as an important dramatist and that his career in the theater would be long and well deserved.⁶

Figures 7-8: The highly coveted role of Fräulein Doktor was performed by numerous actresses throughout Poland, including Zofia Suchankówna (left) at the Teatr Narodowy in Toruñ in 1933 and Zofia Tatarkiewicz-Woskowska (right) at the Teatr Polski in Warsaw in 1933.

Figure 9: The final scene of Fräulein Doktor (1933), as the storm troopers invade.

Figure 10: Leszek Stêpowski, who appeared in both Fräulein Doktor and Ivar Kreuger.

If Fräulein Doktor established Tepa’s literary reputation, both in Poland and abroad, then Ivar Kreuger secured it. Tepa’s second hit play premiered at the Teatr Wielki in Lwów in 1934. It starred Władysław Krasnowiecki, a popular young actor who had completed drama studies in Krakow, where he appeared in numerous productions at the famed Juliusz Słowacki Theater. (He would go on to perform at the National Theater in Warsaw and, after the war, to become Vice Rector of the Theater School, President of the Association of Polish Artists [ZASP], and a film and television actor.) Krasnowiecki’s role in Ivar Kreuger demonstrated his talent: the challenging part demanded not only that he appear in a double role but also that he be on stage for much of the play. Also in the cast lending strong support were the actors Lucjan Żurowski and Leszek Stępowski, who had appeared in Tepa’s debut play, too.

Ivar Kreuger was directed by prominent stage and radioplay director Wacław Radulski, who had trained and taught at the Warsaw Conservatory before assuming the directorship of the Municipal Theaters in Lwów. Sensitive to his actors, Radulski elicited from them wonderfully nuanced and spirited performances. In Ivar Kreuger, he also engaged the audience by making them part of the action: the Eldorado’s chanteuse sings her song Belle Manon directly to the theatergoers, as if they were actually patrons at the club. Set designs, once again, were by Otto Rex; and the elegant score, which not only provided a musical motif but also defined the tempo of the entire production, was composed by Czesław Halski, Tepa’s good friend and colleague at Radio Lwów.

Figure 11: The Teatr Wielki in Lwów, where Jerzy Tepa premiered both his first play, Fräulein Doktor (1933), and his second, Ivar Kreuger (1934).

While not as sensational as Tepa’s first play Fräulein Doktor, Ivar Kreuger was nonetheless a huge critical and popular success. Although the official premiere was at the Teatr Wielki in Lwów, in an unusual bit of staging the play opened simultaneously in several theaters in Poland’s largest cities, including Warsaw and Łódź. Within months, productions had been mounted in eleven Polish cities as well as in Prague, Paris, and Berlin; and