The Glemba Family

"The play 'The Glemba Family' (1929) by Miroslav Krleža – the most significant Croatian author and one of the most influential European modernists of the 20th century – uniquely combines psychological drama with social criticism and verbal baroque. The action takes place in a single night between one and five o'clock in the morning at the home of banker Ignjat Glemba, when the family gathers to celebrate the anniversary of the 'Glemba' joint-stock company. In the tradition of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov, Krleža dissects the bourgeois family not merely as a configuration of interpersonal conflicts, but also as a historical and economic entity, turning it into a stage where the relationships between capitalism, patriarchy, and moral decay are played out. The Glembas are bankers and merchants whose wealth rests on abuses, frauds, and death, embodying what Walter Benjamin describes as the 'catastrophic continuum of history.' The Glemba Family is far more than just a Croatian family in Zagreb at the beginning of the 20th century; it is an allegory of European bourgeois decadence, a reminder of Theodor Adorno's discovery that culture and barbarism are inextricably intertwined, that refinement and brutality grow from the same root. In the modern world, driven by financial speculation, systemic inequality, and the erosion of values, what Krleža describes speaks with prophetic clarity, and the play continues to impact audiences with its relevance. The artist and rebel Leone, who returns to his father's house for the anniversary like a prodigal son, is the tragic conscience of the family, revealing the crimes hidden beneath the surface of its dignity. The climax of his confrontation with his father Ignjat and his young stepmother Baroness Castelli leads to the unleashing of a volcano of truths that destroy the fragile family facade and realize what contemporary critics would describe as an impossible reconciliation between ethics and profit. The aesthetic power of the play comes from its language, in which philosophical reflections constantly collide with grotesque exaggerations, and lyrical melancholy – with flourishing curses, creating a text that is both intimate and monumental. In the world of the Glemba family, theater becomes a space of historical memory and social criticism; a mirror directed at us, which with ruthless accuracy reflects the image of our own era with its crises. Every staging of this text becomes not just a theatrical event, but a collective ritual through which society discovers its wounds and illusions. In the countries of former Yugoslavia, the play has a cult status as a canonical work that defined generations of actors and directors who created iconic images of Leone, Baroness Castelli, Beatrice, and Ignjat Glemba." Ivica Buljan, director The play 'The Glemba Family' was first staged in Bulgaria on the Grand Stage of the National Theatre in 1947, with a galaxy of the most legendary actors of the period taking on the leading roles: Georgi Stamatov, Petia Gerganova, Ruža Delcheva, Konstantin Kisimov, Andrei Chaprazov, Ivan Dimov, Nikola Ikonomov, and Boris Mihaylov. The director was the renowned Serbian theater artist Raša Plavović. Nearly eighty years later, one of the most famous contemporary Croatian directors – Ivica Buljan – stages Krleža's timeless text again on a Bulgarian stage. Buljan describes himself as "one of the most passionate followers of Krleža's work." Driven by his "unremitting desire to share with the modern world the inexhaustible energy, vision, and fury of Krleža's work," he has created productions based on his plays in a number of countries around the world – Croatia, Slovenia, Norway, Lithuania, Montenegro, Côte d'Ivoire. Ivica Buljan (born March 29, 1965) is a Croatian theater director, dramatist, critic, and teacher with worldwide recognition. He graduated in French language and comparative literature from the University of Zagreb and attended the Experimental Theater Academy in Paris (Académie Expérimentale des Théâtres – Paris). He has worked as a theater director since 1995, when he debuted with Le nom sur le bout de la langue ("The Name on the Tip of the Tongue") by Pascal Quignard in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has staged texts by William Shakespeare, Jean Racine, Seneca, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Marina Tsvetaeva, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Heiner Müller, Jean Genet, Robert Walser, Elfriede Jelinek, Hervé Guibert, Peter Handke, Edward Lewis, Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, Eugene O'Neill, and Mats Andersson, as well as adaptations of novels by Danilo Kiš, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Roberto Bolaño, Jens Bjørneboe, Haruki Murakami, and Karl Ove Knausgård. From 1998 to 2001, he was the director of the dramatic department of the Croatian National Theatre in Split, and from 2014 to 2022 – of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. He is a co-founder of Mini teater in Ljubljana and of the World Theater Festival in Zagreb. He teaches at the national theater academies in Rennes and Saint-Étienne in France. In 2018, The New York Times called his production "The Balcony," staged in Munich, "the best European production." Buljan has been awarded the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of the Republic of France and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the highest distinction for artistic achievements in Slovenia – the Prešeren Foundation Award. Miroslav Krleža (July 7, 1893 – December 29, 1981) is considered the most important Croatian author of the 20th century. He left a rich legacy of remarkable texts in various genres – poetry, drama, short stories, novellas, and an intimate diary – his collected works span between 50 and 80 volumes. He is also the author of numerous essays dedicated to the problems of art, history, politics, philosophy, and military strategy. His writing style combines poeticism with sarcasm, and a major theme throughout his entire work is the hypocrisy and conformism of high society in Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbia. His interest in theater dates back to his early youth and accompanied him throughout his life. His first plays "Kralevo," "Christopher Columbus," and "Michelangelo" (written 1918–1919) were strongly influenced by expressionism and symbolism. In them, Krleža attempts to combine theatrical experimentation (with sound, lighting, stage movement) with the proclamation of left-radical ideas, as well as to reconcile the heroic-romantic representation of historical characters with grotesque-carnival mass scenes. It is accepted that "Kralevo" is the first expressionist drama in Europe. In the second phase of his work, the so-called "war cycle," Krleža retains some of his expressionist techniques but subordinates them to a more realistic depiction of social and national upheavals related to the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the emergence of new nation-states ("Galicia" – 1922, "Golgotha" – 1922, "Vučjak" – 1923). In his next three plays "In Agony," "The Glemba Family," and "Leda," created in the period 1928–1932 and forming the famous "Glemba cycle," Krleža abandons his characteristic theatrical innovation and turns to an earlier dramatic model. The works represent a powerful achievement of psychological naturalism and trace the disintegration of a fictional Zagreb aristocratic family, as well as the bourgeois family that appeared as its continuation, against the backdrop of strong, at times even declarative, social criticism.