It’s Fine as Long as We Die in Due Order

Ivor Martinić found his place among the most prominent Croatian contemporary authors early in his career. His works play with familiar motives in unfamiliar ways, with deadpan humour and a life-saving dose of (self)irony. It’s Fine as Long as We Die in Due Order is no exception. The story revolves around a young man who is a millennial variation of Godot, awaited by his family before his leaving to the United States. Martinić has developed a distinct poetics that is simple and dense with meaning, just like his dramatic situations. In the same vein, this production plunges into a sincere unmasking of relationships and conveys the powerful experiences of its characters through performance models that encourage viewer’s imagination. Even though our society suffers from the inferiority complex with an eager eye always looking up to the West, our theatre audience still appreciates their domestic authors and familiar scenes under the spotlights of comedy and grotesque, which makes our inferiority complex more bearable. There are no happy people in this drama, but happy people should not be talking anyway, and the unhappy ones talk little. Silences say all we need to know.