The Garage

The Garage

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Photographs: Zita Bradley

Don’t let the company name fool you: Zagreb Youth Theatre’s brutally nihilistic The Garage is anything but kid’s stuff. The actors aren’t the only ones getting smacked around in this viscerally assaultive Croatian import centered on extreme-fighting-style tournaments. By evening’s end, audience members will also be reeling from this theatrical punch to the gut.

Ten-year-old Binat (Vedran Zivolic) is an autistic-savant brawling machine, so talented that his father pimps him out at the Garage, a seedy Chuck Palahniuk–style fight club, in the hopes of escaping poverty. Doted on by his sickly mother (Ksenija Marinkovic), the mostly mute Binat tortures his father’s hogs and obsessively draws pigs all over the sparse stage. It’s a fitting image, as Mesaric’s unflinching script (adapted from his novel of the same name) paints a grim picture of economic survival in postcommunist Croatia. This is a world where humans wallow in their own squalor as they viciously wrestle for a place at the trough.

Director Ivica Buljan imbues the production with a punk-rock Grotowski aesthetic, combining raw physicality with live Croatian hip-hop band the Beat Fleet. Staged around gym mats evoking a boxing ring, Buljan creates a deliberately chaotic production where Eastern European alienation simultaneously diffuses narrative while amping up emotional impact. Of course, story takes a backseat to theatricality; a subplot involving euthanasia tourism never really clicks. But when Binat finally finds his voice—singing a rage-filled thrash-metal indictment—you can’t deny that The Garage delivers a powerful blow.—Paul Menard

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