eculturebase.com/Review/European Theatre on the Slovak Stage
Author: Barbara Brathová
The end of the 2025/2026 season brought several significant premieres to Bratislava theatres, responding through various poetics to social tension, power, violence and the fragility of interpersonal relationships. The production The Merchant of Venice/Mauser, directed by Dávid Paška, combines Shakespeare's classic with Heiner Müller's text into a visually, sonically and performatively intense statement on compassion, justice and the cruelty that can be legitimised by a system.
The end of the 2025/2026 season generated a series of premieres in Bratislava theatres addressing socially urgent and timeless themes, which chillingly suggest that, across the centuries, not all that much has changed in human behaviour and conduct. Strong titles such as By the Bog of Cats at the Slovak National Theatre, Bang at Divadlo Aréna, and, on a somewhat different and lighter level, Amateurs at the Slovak National Theatre – reviews of which we have published on this portal – and finally the last premiere of the season at DPOH, The Merchant of Venice/Mauser, dangerously and at the same time necessarily indicate that, metaphorically speaking, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark".
The production by successful Slovak director of the emerging generation Dávid Paška, which premiered at the Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav Theatre on 20 June 2026, brings together two powerful texts – The Merchant of Venice and Mauser – on the basis of their shared theme of compassion and forgiveness in the face of uncompromising and difficult-to-resolve dilemmas.