On Friday, August 9, 2024, Mini teater performed the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" by Edward Albee, directed by Ivica Buljan, featuring Nataša Barbara Gračner, Branko Šturbej, Benjamin Krnetić, and Klara Kuk, in co-production with the City Theatre Ptuj, at the 70th Split Summer Festival. The sold-out performance, held at Plinara - the courtyard of HNK Split, received an excellent response from the audience and exceptionally positive reviews.
Magdalena Mrčel wrote about the play for Dalmacija Danas on August 30, 2024: "They say that directorial greatness is shown in its apparent absence, while everything on stage works flawlessly. If this is true, we can rightfully say that Ivica Buljan is the prototype of directorial greatness, and his creative team is also at a high level. The visual impression of the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", a drama that has had its Oscar-winning film adaptation, is created on that thin line between 'not trying too hard' and an expressionistic scene that transforms emotions with its characters, colors, and feelings."
She also highlighted and beautifully described individual roles: "Nataša Barbara Gračner and Branko Šturbej excellently portray Martha and George as an extremely toxic couple. Martha is a walking paradox, as she simultaneously tells her husband that he makes her want to vomit and that she hasn't noticed him for years, while also suffering from a lack of attention and doing everything to at least spark some interest in her husband. He even turns a blind eye to the obvious flirtation between Martha and his younger colleague Nick, but surgically dissects his relationship with his wife and, like a pathologist, explores the emotional traumas that will, gathered into one sad, disturbing, stinking mass that should have remained private, become a valuable weapon. Krnetić excellently builds the character of Nick, who started out as a typical exemplary intellectual, but under the pressure of a dangerous psychological game in which he was drawn in like a naive child, he will eventually question whether his ethical and humanistic values are even more corrupted than those of the neighbors who pushed him into this room of nightmares. The young wife Honey, initially as important to the events as a red sunflower (strategically hidden several times during the conversation!), in the violently narrated story of the marriage "that had to happen" and the family trauma that could not be avoided, becomes a powder keg and through the subtle nuances of emotions by Klara Kuk, also a metaphor for decay."
In conclusion, she wrote: "If we remember the performance as one of the most poignant (alongside the play "Red Water," another Buljan's thriller gem), we will remember the actors as the epitome of their profession, fascinatingly adaptable, focused, endlessly exposed, vulnerable and wounded, explosively dramatic in a flood of emotions that they so brutally and truthfully threw before us. This is one of those performances that make us understand why actors say they need a 'strong head' – a performance that shakes you so much that you wish the agony would end, yet at the same time – performed in a way that you do not want the artistic imagination to reach its end."
After watching the performance, the renowned Croatian writer Borica Jelušić also expressed great enthusiasm, stating: "Last night at Plinara (courtyard of HNK Split) an exceptional drama E. Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF directed by Buljan. A true tribute for gourmets, prepared by Mini teater from Ljubljana and Mestno gledališče Ptuj, visiting Split. Strong, dark energy in the interaction of characters, breaking through the shell of bourgeois and academic life, overflowing into cynical remarks, inhibitions, and frustrations, inevitably reaching the edge of excess. The feeling that there are many more personalities on stage than the four designated protagonists. Disintegration in various stages; lies and deceit as a sedative in unbearable reality. A trembling anima trying to break through the dark labyrinth to find relief in the zone of empathy. Buljan's signature is superior, always elevating the text to a higher, provocative tone, pulling us into the game and not allowing us to "think of anything else." Does theater have a future as such? My answer is positive. We enter wounded and exit healed or vice versa. It is very important that we were given the opportunity and did not miss it. Congratulations to the ensemble and director. Thank you for the experience."
