Vinko Möderndorfer (1958) is a Slovenian playwright, fiction and children’s author, poet, theatre, film and opera director. He ranks as one of the most successful and critically acclaimed contemporary Slovenian playwrights. To name but a few, his plays have won the Best New Comedy Award at the annual Slovenian comedy festival six times and two Grum Awards for the best new play. Celje People’s Theatre has always recognized the importance of including new Slovenian plays in its repertoire, and puts special emphasis on staging them to support the development of contemporary Slovenian drama reflecting topical issues.
A Nostalgic Comedy consists of a series of interlaced scenes showing various stages in the life of a married couple. It presents their taking stock of their shared life. What transpires is that they have different recollections of same events. We see them as a young love-struck couple, a middle-aged couple and an aged couple who has managed to survive many trials and tribulations. As we gradually an in-depth insight into their relationship, their problems and thrills, we learn what used to bond them and divide them.
They diverge in their assessment of their common past; they do remember the key events in their lives, but interpret them differently. The comedy deals with divergent perceptions of life; people remember different details, feelings and reactions, and perceive the other person’s reactions in a totally different way. The truth is never objective. It is but a subjective insight of an event; everybody has their own truth. A shared life is an interplay of diverging perceptions and experiences of the same event, so the married couple remembers their life disjointedly. The Old Man and the Old Woman have a different view of their relationship. What they do have in common is a shared nostalgia that permeates their conversation and their remembrance, a longing for the past gone by, for their mutual feelings, for the things that are long gone, and above all, nostalgia for the life that has run its course.
A Nostalgic Comedy is a portrayal of a life that goes by much too quickly and of relationships that can bond people and divide them. Dealing with generation gap issues between parents and children it is also a play about the transient nature and contingency of our existence. What is it that we leave behind after we die? Is the memory preserved by our dearest and nearest anywhere near the truth?
A Nostalgic Comedy is an intimate and compelling story about family and family relationships, the process of aging and dying. It outlines different stages in the life of a married couple, their falling in love and a developing relationship, their promises, birth of their children, relationship with parents and their general surroundings. It is a story of each of us trying to construct our own truths about our existence and dealing with our own transience.