Striptease, Repeat Performance and The Prophets: Three Plays

Slawomir Mrozek, the Polish-born writer whose plays – among them Tango and Vatzlav – have earned him a reputation as one of Europe’s most inventive new playwrights, has written three more plays which confirm his position as a master of modern satire whose concerns are as political as they are moral. In Striptease, two characters – one an intellectual, the other an activist – find themselves inside a room where a gigantic hand instructs them to remove their clothes until both act out an elaborate dance of rationalized submission. In Repeat Performance, a middle-aged man on an escapade with his son’s young wife encounters a ghost from his own youth – the charismatic political leader to whom he had sworn everlasting allegiance, and whose spirit has now returned to claim either the father or the son. The Prophets tells what happens when two prophets show up to fulfill the prophesies instead of just one.