Kicic returns to his Ode to Joy: a season-closing revival at Atelje 212

A bank. Count Andrenji walks in with his sister Kremena and tries to sell his old refrigerator for cash.

That is probably the strongest scene of “Oda radosti” (Ode to Joy) and the one critics gathered around after the January premiere. The same banker then turns up at the Andrenjis’ house for a friendly dinner, because they have meanwhile turned out to be second cousins.

The play returns tonight at 8 p.m. on the main stage of Atelje 212, a revival before the end of the season. After the January 31 premiere, Belgrade critics split. One side received the production as a serious theatre handling comedy at a high level. The other concluded the staging did not keep pace with the intellectual edge of Sili’s text.

Four months later, the revival becomes a test of its own. Plays of this kind get verified in the second half of the season, when one sees whether audiences come back. Going by ticket sales so far, they do.

What sits behind “Ode to Joy”

The comedy is formally a prequel to “Nocna straza” (The Night Watch), Kicic’s earlier play that sold out the same theatre two seasons ago.

The protagonists are the same, but in an earlier moment in time. Count Andrenji and his sister Kremena, set in the previous play as a family with faked aristocratic manners, now return to their prehistory. How they actually lost the money, what they discarded, which social formation produced them.

With this Kicic enters a directorial move almost absent from contemporary Serbian theatre: a series of connected plays with the same characters across different points in their lives.

What the production does, and what it does not

“Ode to Joy” is dramaturgically clean. Sili’s text in prose is ironic, structured around a few strong scenes (the bank scene above among them), which the cast plays at precise tempo with a comic ease Kicic, in a recent Politika interview, called “a level that does not get learned, it arrives with the years”.

The ensemble is solidly assembled:

• Goran Susljik as Andrenji
• Anita Mancic as Kremena
• Branislav Trifunovic as the banker
• Jelisaveta Karadzic and Filip Djuric in the remaining roles

The play keeps its tempo through the second half, which is always the hardest stretch for a comedy because the ensemble chemistry tires faster than the audience notices. Kicic resolves that stretch with a musical segment, an orchestral arrangement of the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth, which is at once a textual reference to the title and the dramaturgical brace on which the play closes.

What “Ode to Joy” does not do enough is press on the social dimension of the text. Sili’s prose has a sharper critique of a society that, in his own words, has “turned away from real values and lost itself in surface, lies and manipulation”. The play touches that layer, but with a lighter hand than the text suggests.

That can be read as a directorial choice, a refusal to let the comedy drift into a didactic register, which would indeed be the wrong move. It can also be read as a missed opportunity.

Kicic as a director

Gordan Kicic is primarily known in Serbian theatre as an actor, with notable roles at Atelje 212, BDP and the Madlenianum. Over the last few seasons, though, the centre of his work has begun to shift toward directing.

“The Night Watch” two years ago was his first major directorial success: sold-out halls, serious critical reception. “Ode to Joy” is his second collaboration with Sili, with the same creative team:

• costumes: Tatjana Radisic
• set design: Vesna Popovic
• music: Vladimir Pejkovic

That is already a recognisable team. Stable directorial collaborators give a theatrical language one can identify, which is not a frequent luxury in Serbian theatre.

Kicic’s directorial vocabulary is narrow but legible. Brisk dynamics. Acting at precise tempo. Costumes with careful period accuracy. Set design that is minimal but symbolically dense. That kind of directorial identity is something Atelje 212 has not had for decades.

Can comedy say what tragedy cannot?

Comedy has dominated the Serbian theatrical season for several years now, on independent stages but also on the major ones. It reflects an audience tired of dramatic weight, looking for theatre that does not frighten but rather lifts.

Kicic’s comedy is not naive. Social criticism is built in, but the main goal stays entertainment with an intellectual frame, which for a contemporary audience means more than critics tend to admit.

Tickets tonight cost between 1,000 and 2,500 dinars, modest for the late season. The next revival is June 2, after which Atelje takes a brief pause before BELEF, where “Ode to Joy” does not appear in the program, though next season’s autumn repertoire is expected to bring it back regularly.

What comes after “Ode to Joy”

Kicic said in his most recent interview that he is already working with Sili on a third production from the same narrative universe. The subject is the next generation, the children of the characters from “The Night Watch” and “Ode to Joy”, working title “Bestseler”.

If that project materialises, Serbian contemporary theatre will get its first genuine directorial trilogy in prose-dramaturgical form in three decades. It would also be the chance to see whether Kicic’s directorial vocabulary can extend beyond the scenes it already knows how to solve.

What do you think: can contemporary Serbian theatre deliver real social critique through comedy alone, or does tragedy still hold its place?