American Theatre Magazine (see original article)

Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina

HERE'S TO YOU, OR BIZARRE: At the Bosnian National Theatre of Zenica, a Bulgarian director is making his Bosnian debut. Petar Kaukov is the head of his native country's Youth Theatre Nikolay Binev, an expansive space in Sofia that presents handsomely mounted kid-friendly fare, as well as musicals and dramas aimed at an older crowd.

The play he is directing in Zenica, by Serbian playwright Zeljko Hubac, is definitely more suitable for the latter age-group. Here's to You, or Bizarre is a bleakly funny fugue of death, set on several levels of an apartment building in Belgrade populated by junkies, hookers and mobsters. An English translation of the play, subtitled "Three scenes of nonsense for five actors and fifteen characters," can be read online at www.pozorje.org.rs/scenaeng/no21-6.htm. According to Serbian critic Svetislav Jovanov, Hubac's script turns dramatic conventions upside-down through his "treatment of realism as a sophisticated game with an open outcome." But it feels inevitable, as these three gritty stories are layered on top of one another, that the outcome for none of these desperate characters could be good. (Opens in March; (387) 32-401-142; www.bnp.com.ba)