The Crazy Locomotive

“The Crazy Locomotive, which Witkacy wrote in 1923, is one of his shortest and most powerful plays. Two master criminals, Prince Tréfaldi and his associate Travaillac, who have been masquerading as a railroad engineer and his fireman, seize control of a locomotive and smash it into another train at high speed in order to bring about ‘God’s Judgement’, a cataclysm on a cosmic scale so they can experience the Mystery of Existence. When Sophia, the engineer’s wife, and Julia, the fireman’s fiancée, join their men aboard the fast-moving train, unforeseen sexual complications arise, and the demonic Sophia is thrown out of the locomotive. Then the appearance of the conductor, passengers, and the banal reality which Tréfaldi and Travaillac had hoped to escape totally destroys the purity of their metaphysical journey through space. The tracks cannot take them out of this world into another dimension, but only along a predictable route to known human disaster and into the hands of the authorities. In its handling of dynamic tensions and accelerating tempos, The Crazy Locomotive is one of Witkacy’s masterpieces, showing the playwright’s ability to find a descriptive theatrical image and develop its multiple associations for maximum effect.” (Daniel Gerould)

The rhythm accelerates along with the speeding up of the locomotive, but the play provides enough space for humorous characters and witty, ironic perspective on the quest of appeasement between the fusion of human dreams and fascination with technical achievements. One of the main elements of Witkacy's playwriting is self-irony. In The Crazy Locomotive it comes to the fore, since the author puts his own thoughts and questions regarding the quest of the so-called metaphysical dimension of human existence into the mouth of two mentally unstable criminals.

Jernej Lorenci (1973, Maribor) directs on a regular basis in the Slovene professional theatres as well as abroad. He has received numerous national and international awards for his work, including three Maribor Theatre Festival Awards for best director and three grand prix for best performance, the Šeligo Award for best performance of the Week of Slovenian Drama, the grand prix for best performance, the award for best director at the International Festival of Chamber Theatre in Umag, Croatia, and the grand prix for best performance at the Ex Ponto festival. He holds a position of Senior Lecturer at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana where he is a teacher of stage acting and theatre and radio directing.

The Slovene National Theatre Drama Ljubljana is one of the nine professional repertoire theatres in Slovenia and at the same time the oldest of the three theatres founded by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia. Being an important drama theatre in Slovenia, its repertoire includes contemporary, classical, and experimental drama works of Slovene and foreign playwrights. The theatre regularly presents its most visible productions at Slovene theatre festivals, and in recent seasons the ensemble has also successfully participated at international festivals as well.