A concert–musical hybrid that vandalises a Polish national epic – an attempt to reinterpret the bard’s work through the lens of Polish rebelliousness and social dysfunction.

The storyline of Pan Tadeusz is transported into a world somewhere between Trailer Park Boys and the Polish documentary Blokersi (Boys from the Hood), where rap and street slang are the natural forms of expression. The director zooms in on his own small homeland – Raszyn, just outside Warsaw – in search of the roots of maniacal nationalism, still the dominant ideology among suburban and so-called “provincial” communities.

The creators seek authentic parallels by juxtaposing the post-communist tower-block reality of the 1990s with the provincial Lithuania depicted in Mickiewicz’s poem. Contemporary language collides and converses with the classic thirteen-syllable verse, while on stage we see archetypes that blend Sarmatian nobility with suburban hooliganism.