One day, the forty-something Hester Swan meets a ghost who escorts the dead to the other side. The ghost is a bit confused - he mistook the dawn for the dusk and arrived too early. As it turns out, the person she is to escort to the other world in a few hours is Hester. Irish playwright Marina Carr has rewritten the ancient story of Medea in the contemporary Irish countryside. Hester fights over a younger man who has left her for a significantly younger and wealthier bride. She is fighting for her old life, for her house, for her seven-year-old daughter Josie; she is fighting like all of us against her tragic fate. In this play, Marina Carr has exposed the basic human drives and passions - love, hatred, feelings of betrayal and the thirst for revenge - to the very core. She has situated the story of the ancient royal family in the context of Irish peasants and the nouveau riche, a setting that is familiar even to us. As a result, she moved ancient tragedy closer to tragicomedy. The world, in which the harsh reality of the countryside mingles with rumours and legends, is populated by mysterious and poetic figures of ghosts and ferocious cat-women, characters of harsh and even crude peasants, and comic characters from the local community, among whom the elderly parson plays a prominent role. The Irish adaptation of the ancient drama directed by Matúš Bachynec, who returns to the Drama Theatre of the Slovak National Theatre, is surprisingly Slovak.

 

 

Première May 30, 2026