Andreas Zavoczky, nicknamed Liliom, is undoubtedly a handsome carousel driver. He's the type of tough dude who has always been attracted to women: from poor girls to rich ladies. When he finally finds his love, he loses his job. Crime, guilt, punishment, chance...
A sentimental story from the beginning of the last century turns into a social probe into the life of the big city periphery, which opens up the eternally recurring question of the nature of crime. Though sentimental, Liliom is also a tragicomic tale from the urban periphery in which several strands interweave: social, relational, psychological... Moreover, there is an unconventional, transcendental overlay to the story.
In director Martin Čičvák's contemporary rendition, the universal themes of the play are opened up. Liliom is Molnar's best-known play and has seen several adaptations for television and film.
While still studying stage direction at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno (with Alois Hajda), Martin Čičvák created several intriguing productions for Studio Marta and staged his own plays (A House That Does Well and Sonja the Agent). From 1999 to 2004, he worked as a stage director for the drama company of the National Theatre in Brno. His first production, an adaptation of Thomas Bernhard’s Immanuel Kant, earned him the 1999 Alfréd Radok Award in the Talent of the Year category. Since 2000, he has been resident stage director of the Činoherní klub theatre in Prague.
Over the past few years, he has worked for several theatres in Prague, including Činoherní klub (Tennessee Williams: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 2022; Peter Shaffer: Equus, 2021), ABC (an adaptation of Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator, 2021), Rokoko (an adaptation of David Grossman’s novel A Horse Walks into a Bar, 2020), Divadlo pod Palmovkou (Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard, 2021), Ungelt (Stephen Temperley: Souvenir, 2021) and the Vinohrady Theatre (Viktor Dyk: The Coming to Wisdom of Don Quixote, 2020), and elsewhere, including the National Theatre in Brno (Eugène Labiche: The Italian Straw Hat, 2020) and the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň. He has also worked with the National Theatre in Bratislava, where he debuted with an adaptation of Ronald Schimmelpfennig’s drama The Arabian Night (2004), which received several Dosky theatre prizes. Critically acclaimed too are his productions for the same theatre of Friedrich Schiller’s Intrigue and Love (2007), Georg Büchner’s Leonce and Lena (DOSKY, 2008) and of both parts of J. W. Goethe’s Faust (2010). Since 2004, Martin Čičvák has regularly collaborated with Bratislava’s Aréna theatre. In 2019, the Vígszínház theatre in Budapest premiered his adaptation of John Cassavetes’s film Opening Night.
Martin Čičvák made his debut at the National Theatre in Prague in 2003 with a production of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Good Person of Szechwan, which was followed by adaptations of the book The One Thousand and One Nights (2005) and William Shakespeare’s plays The Merchant of Venice (2009) and The Taming of the Shrew (2011). He has also made productions of operas, including for the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň (Vincenzo Bellini: I Capuleti e i Montecchi, 2001; and W. A. Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 2003) and the National Theatre in Prague (Mozart: Così fan tutte, 2010; and Verdi: Macbeth, 2015).
