divadelni-noviny.cz // Review // Nová Komedie: The Wild Conquest of the West-East

Author: Jan Hurta

Source: Divadelní noviny

Shortly after Donald Trump's second election as President of the United States, the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek published her work Endsieg. The postdramatic text takes the form of an uninterrupted stream of consciousness that associatively follows Trump's rise to power while simultaneously portraying the entire Republican MAGA movement through grotesque satire. Director Dávid Paška distributed the text among four actors and, through dramaturg Martin Kubran's free translation, also related it to the current political situation in Slovakia, which in many respects bears striking similarities. Thus, for the fourth edition of the Nová Komedie Festival, Bratislava's Divadlo Malá scéna brought forth an exceptionally timely and urgent response to contemporary global political developments.

Endsieg // Dobytie opens with a two-voice recitation of Paul Celan's "Death Fugue" (performed by Zuzana Fialová and Annamária Janeková), whose verses return throughout the production as recurring leitmotifs. Indeed, the production formally and structurally follows the compositional principle of the fugue throughout its entire duration. Although Jelinek's apocalyptic vision of Trumpist America revolves primarily around the theme of seizing power, individual motifs continuously recur, overlap, and permeate one another like a musical composition. Paška takes the melodic structure of the source material as the basis for the staging and works with remarkable precision in directing the quartet of actors. The performers do not embody specific characters; however, through age and text distribution they can be read as a prototype of an American family — the parents (Robert Roth and Zuzana Fialová) and their two adult children (Dávid Hartl and Annamária Janeková). An entirely ordinary MAGA family, eagerly awaiting Trump's second election and fanatically glorifying him as savior, king, and redeemer.

The production relies heavily on the acting quartet and their interpretation of the text. For Jelinek's dense and exceptionally verbose stream of thought, Paška chose an expressive and highly stylized form. The actors hurl the seemingly endless sentences at the audience almost like machine-gun fire; the cadence is so rapid that words and meanings can barely be fully grasped and processed. Yet this breathless pace is repeatedly interrupted by contrasting slowdowns, emphases on individual pauses between words, or extended moments of silence. As a result, the verbal dimension of the performance — particularly in the faster passages — approaches the character of an athletic feat, placing enormous demands on the performers: what matters is the precision of every single word and breath, which must simultaneously merge with rhythm, intonation, and irony.

Robert Roth's diction is almost hypnotic, extraordinarily precise, and flows seamlessly between various vocal registers. Moreover, Roth structures his delivery masterfully and captivates the audience through striking grimaces and gestures. Zuzana Fialová is equally compelling; compared to Roth, she opts for a lesser degree of stylization, enabling her to oscillate more naturally between dogmatic conviction and ironic undertones. Although Roth and Fialová are given considerably more space, the younger acting duo remains fully their equal. Annamária Janeková forms the most fragile component of the ensemble and frequently stands in opposition to it. This is particularly evident in a scene in which, blindfolded, she allegorically embodies the goddess of justice, powerless in the face of the situation that has unfolded and blindly walking toward the edge of the stage. Dávid Hartl, in turn, asserts his position of strength not only through words but also through his athletic physicality. Shirtless, wearing a MAGA cap and jeans layered with fringes of torn denim, he appears as a modern cowboy who worships Trump and accurately imitates his familiar gestures — winking at the audience, the raised thumbs-up, and the ridiculous little dances.

The atmosphere of the Wild West is further completed by Julius Leon Seiler's stage design. On a stage covered with tufts of dried straw stand two buildings made of white-painted wooden slats. The white house in the foreground, beyond the obvious allegory of the presidential residence, also serves as a symbol of Trump's personality: the entrance is framed by pompous Doric columns that nevertheless cannot conceal the fact that, at its core, it remains merely a primitive shack. The second structure at the rear of the stage is a barn. Inside it stands a tanning bed which — unsurprisingly — resembles a coffin, thereby creating another ironic jab at the "orange man," whose political return resembles the reanimation of a corpse far more than the second coming of a savior.

On a screen mounted atop the barn, live-cinema footage alternates with television commercials from the 1960s. While the live-cinema images (created by Ráchel Rimarčíková) from inside the house provide a more intimate and less confrontational layer, the commercials serve as a characterization of an American society in which consumerism and simplistic advertising slogans have found their way from television directly into the highest spheres of politics. The stage and costume design therefore operate primarily through associations and symbols, excellently supporting the suggestive language of the play.

The individual sections of the production are framed by gunshots referring to the assassination attempt on Trump. Yet both mind and gut become intertwined here, for assassinations themselves — about which speculation also persists regarding the extent to which they may have been staged for political purposes — form one of the parallels between Trump's America and Fico's Slovakia. Both politicians furthermore share a nationalist rhetoric longing for the "good old days," a chauvinistic attitude toward female opposition candidates (Harris and Čaputová), and a fanatical electorate.

Paška and Kubran have thus created an exceptionally timely dramaturgical achievement whose tension between West and East greatly benefits the production, as similar populist tendencies can increasingly be observed across the globe — ultimately here as well. Trump frequently functions as a role model for politicians of this type, who proudly identify with him while wearing the symbolic red cap. Endsieg // Dobytie therefore points, within a broader context, toward a global paradigm shift, the structural problems of democracy, and the continual escalation of political rhetoric.

Between my visit to the performance and the publication of this text, another assassination attempt on Trump took place, and Trump himself portrayed himself as Jesus Christ on his social network Truth Social with the help of AI. One almost gains the feeling of actually living inside Jelinek's political satire — left only to wonder how far all this can go. Paška offers us little hope for better times.

Elfriede Jelinek: Endsieg // Dobytie
Translation and Dramaturgy: Martin Kubran
Concept, Adaptation, Direction: Dávid Paška
Concept, Stage Design: Julius Leon Seiler
Concept, Costumes: Maria-Lena Poindl
Music: Ivan Acher
Camera: Ráchel Rimarčíková

A production of Divadlo Malá scéna Bratislava, presented as part of the Nová Komedie Festival at Divadlo Komedie on 20 April 2026.