Tower Raven at Teatr Dramatyczny
How far will a mother go to save her son? In Tower Raven Katarzyna Herman inhabits two roles. That of a middle-aged widowed woman who has a teenaged son named Konstantin (Konrad Szymanski) and that of Toffy, a fictional teenaged girl with a social media profile created to lore Kostia out of his morose silence. To make him emerge from his room, where he mostly plays violent video games.The well-written play, beautifully translated from Russian to Polish by Bożena Majorczyk, is packed with social-media slang well used to raise a laugh out of the audience. As Toffy, Herman unleashes a torrent of curses due to her conviction that "this is how the youth of today communicate." She is surprised to learn Kostia doesn't swear as much as she thought and is elated to learn he writes poetry.
Hovering above the mother-son relationship is the absence of a man, Vanya. When asked to clean the blood stain from the sleeve of his late father's suit, Kostia rebels and destroys it. In his online chats with Toffy he tells her his mother is dead and that his father looks after him and the two go fishing together. An ideal father-son relationship cut short due to Vanya's death. The empty, burnt suit serves as a symbol to a real pain which nearly everyone faces these days – a crisis of manhood.
From skinny teenagers who self-define themselves on online forums and chat-groups as INCEL (Involuntary Celibates) and plan violent attacks against women - like the one currently under investigation in France - to beefed-up, menacing men who patrol the Polish-German border demanding the drivers submit to their demands and release real-time videos of their deeds on social media – there seems to be a terrible urge to be seen, either as a failed man who wears this deformity like an arm-band or an ultra-pseudo protector of the motherland.
Kostia is on neither extreme, he listens to Slayer, plays video games, and likes to watch you-tube slapstick videos. We know Donald Trump was the US President when he and "Toffy" begin to chat online because his mother buys him an IPhone 10, but politics do not exist in this play. In that sense, it is truly universal. Kostia and his mother can live in your building - or in Japan. Kostia fantasizes about living the life of a homeless man because "all I need is a web-connection and a laptop." In that sense, his situation is relatable to anyone with a smartphone.
Director Aldona Figura wisely chose not to turn Szymanski into a caricature of a young person. It would have been easy to hand him soda and chips - baritone Kyle Miller sang his role in Grounded, a Met Opera about combat usage of remote controlled drones screened at Teatr Studio last year, with similar props. Yet Szymanski is a versatile, physically capable actor. He is not an overweight teen burning time in racial-hate chats – he is likeable - this is why we feel his pain when he learns Toffy isn't real.
The ravens in London's tower are unable to fly because their wings are clipped. This is because of a superstition that, should they ever leave the tower, England would not stand. This is the name Kostia gives himself online and – in that sense – the performance is about a young man who eventually rebels against the attempt to keep him pinned down due to fear of ruination. Followers of Herman's television and film work will be delighted to witness her profound talent in an intimate theater setting as she, with a tilt of her head in a Zombie-like fashion, transform from an iconic Polish Mother who will destroy herself to save her family and a Goth teenager who feels like a stuffed and mounted goat.
Tower Raven is included in Teatr Dramatyczny's line of performances with English surtitles. Please note that they can be read from rows 6-7 only when buying a ticket. For more, visit: https://teatrdramatyczny.pl/
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Hagay Hacohen – A theater and opera critic who divides his time between Israel and Poland, Hagay works primarily for The Jerusalem Post and has a rich experience in cultural work and Polish-Jewish relations. He can be reached at hagay_hacohen@yahoo.com or LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/hagay-hacohen-08b77795/
Mateusz Urban – A researcher and translator in the field of Polish theater and its cultural relevance, Urban is based in Warsaw and has a rich background in cultural work. He can be reached at mat.j.urban@gmail.com or LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/mateusz-urban-a13a2063/
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Hagay Hacohen , Mateusz Urban
Dziennik Teatralny Warszawa
22 lipca 2025