50 WORDS, dir. Waldemar Zawadziński

50 words — why is this always the case?

We love stories about love. Nothing sells like the promise of the fulfillment of romantic desires, dressed in a not very specific, and yet familiar to everyone

the “happily ever after” time perspective. It was also bought by Lena and Adam, heroes of Michael Weller's play “50 Words”, which since November 2022 can be seen on the stage of the Kamil Maćkowiak Theater. We meet Lena (Maria Seweryn) and Adam (Kamil Maćkowiak) after 10 years of marriage, on the first evening they spend without their 9-year-old son. A unique opportunity raises quite a lot of expectations in the spouses - he is counting on great sex, she - that he will finally catch up on work and relax with a glass of wine. A cliche? None of those things. Weller's text is a complex study of human relationships that demythologizes the image of the romantic relationship of two people, while at the same time conveying in a moving way the truth of love, which includes almost everything: closeness, hatred, fatigue, rejection, mindfulness, fidelity, desire, selfishness, routine, a cry for tenderness, and especially disappointment - with oneself and with one's partner em. One word is not enough to describe what is happening between the people closest to each other, overwhelmed by unspeakable loneliness.

Bitter words fall from the scene, such as the definition of marriage as the union of two people who continue to disappoint each other. There is a thread of choice between career and

motherhood, the crisis of masculinity, the pressure of having children, resorting to lying for the good of the other person. It is a story about love as it is: fragile, imperfect, full of hope and need, like the two people who make it up.

Do Lena and Adam, who learn more about each other in one evening than in their entire marriage — or at least finally have the courage to tell the truth?

see — are they able and will want to verify their ideas for living together? Will they find in themselves forgiveness, a place for the authenticity of the partner or the determination to go their separate ways from now on? And, perhaps most interestingly, will they make the decision on their own or will they win back cultural expectations, regarding what they are allowed and what is not done (even for the sake of the child)?