Seasons Review – It’s a match for Ibsen and Peter Pan in the record of actors who have ruined their lives on and off stage | film

THe plays that thing in this light-hearted Polish comedy-drama that captures its hero’s marital complexities. Theater actor Marcin (Łukasz Simlat) plays Captain Hook in a production of Peter Pan. His unhappy wife Ola (Agnieszka Duleba-Kasza) announces that she is gone; Then, when their argument spills into the wings of the stage where she plays Tinkerbell, she reveals that she previously slept with someone else. Zimovit/Peter Pan (Dobromir Demicki) looks sheepish – before being lifted out of reach of the wires just in time.

A few months later, Marcin stars as Torvald in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House opposite his new love Ewa (Victoria Velos) as Nora. But when she falls through the trapdoor, guess who will take his place in that role? Tensions mount when Marcin and Olla once again find themselves leading the bill in a sparring Oberon and Titania, in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on which the future of their company depends.

Despite the thrilling farce of the first section, in which a brawl breaks out on stage in front of terrified children anticipating a light-hearted spectacle, director and co-writer Michal Grzebowski seems to be more of an Ibsen man, with a rather dim view of adult relationships. However, the film is starkly literal in what it suggests about life feeding art; Not just in the sudden rivalry between Hook and Frying Pan, but in the way Marcin chokes up in A Doll’s House rehearsals when Ola has to muster his passion. With little in the way of light humor (a pair of backstage characters are always bickering over DeNiro; Marcin’s father never follows through on his threats to quit the company), Seasons falls short of the playful Shakespearean interweaving of world and theater he conjures.

Simlat at least has the opportunity for some technically complex work that simultaneously showcases the theatrical role and the actor behind it: he subtly modulates his features to suggest someone who never misses an opportunity to let life intrude on his craft, far beyond what his pro-methodist director would have liked. But with Grzybowski also opting for a somber Woody Allen-style finale, it’s as if the director, like Marcin, has commitment issues when it comes to tone.