“Do You Remember Dolly Bell?” – a symbol of an era, the story of a generation. (…) It is a portrait of the spirit of 1960s Sarajevo a spirit whose outlines, at the level of collective consciousness, have not faded even today. A subtle critique of the system, the complexity of interpersonal relationships, and a society of fluid values.
Unlike the film, the play does not end in Yugoslavia it begins today, as the main character returns to his city with a suitcase, to the setting of a modest, impoverished youth. He begins to recall not only his intimate hopes and loves, but also the illusory social enthusiasms about equality and a better life. Images of that smudged, rough-edged life filled with a mother’s simple care and the warmth of humble spinach pie, but also with the harshness of street upbringing and the rigidity of ideological worldviews pass across the stage like flashes from another time, like torn pages of memory. In them, there is neither excessive nostalgia nor overt accusation. Because that is simply how it was. (…)
The entire stage design consists solely of suitcases with which one constantly arrives and departs. Even when placed on the ground and opened, they represent only improvised constructions of all our lives, until the next move. Real, harsh, political, or intimate.
“Will the sun ever truly shine in this city?”