August Strindberg. THE GREAT HIGHWAY, dir. Jonas VAITKUS

Clara — Jolanta DAPKŪNAITĖ

Markata; The Japanese man's disowned daughter; Hand of the Eternal; Peasant girl — Birutė MAR

The Japanese man — Salvijus TREPULIS

Miller — Algirdas DAINAVIČIUS

Miller — Marius Michailas REPŠYS

People of the "Donkey" and "Liar" villages; Septet of the sanctuary singers — Juozas ALIŠAUSKAS, Diana ANEVIČIŪTĖ, Neringa BULOTAITĖ, Mantas BARVIČIUS, Vaidilė JUOZAITYTĖ, Jurga KALVAITYTĖ, Ieva LABANAUSKAITĖ, Aivaras MICIUS, Rasa RAPALYTĖ, Arūnas VOZBUTAS

"The Great Highway" (Stora landsvägen) is August Strindberg's final play. The literal title of this drama refers to the street of Strindberg's own childhood, which led directly to the cemetery. It is no coincidence that his last drama is compared to a kind of testament or a theatrical self-portrait of the author. Strindberg depicts this drama like a journey into his own memory, where at every "stop" the drama's protagonist sees his own character and other allegorical figures of the narrative – the Traveler, the Child, the Tempter, or the Murderer. "The Great Highway" is an allegorical narrative, a summary of the playwright's life thoughts. Strindberg's contemporaries criticized him for combining everyday and poetic language, and for a lack of drama. "The Great Highway" stood out sharply from the rest of the playwright's work, but today this piece is valued by many literary scholars as a compelling way to convey the fragile emotional and psychological state of a character without dramatization.

Director Jonas Vaitkus says: "This pre-death play by the playwright is a travel drama with seven stations. It is a reflection of his entire body of work – from concise, abrasive prose to contrasting leaps toward symbolism and metaphors with gender opposition and sexual deviations. Unrhythmic poetry that speaks about the inner emotional state of a thinking person, without dramatizing or emphasizing the mortal fate, without fear of plunging into the stench of realism and naturalism and breaking out again with a satirical, ironic view of the unsolvable affairs of the Heavens, the Earth, and Man, without fear of admitting one's own limitations. After all, you are condemned to death, and because of this, you experience daily grief and suffering in the face of divine eternity. But you do not consider it a punishment or total evil against which you must rebel or throw yourself into disastrous atheistic or other extremes, although there were and are many who perished themselves and destroyed millions. You simply accept it as the tragedy of an unchangeable, inevitable given, as a mandatory fee for the grace granted to exist, for the priceless gift of eternity granted to be a consciously acting human being in this tragedy, which protects, heals, and clarifies the soul.

I am not surprised why this play is unknown in Lithuania and untranslated in Russia. It is very rarely staged even in August Strindberg's homeland.

"The Great Highway" unscrupulously strips man bare as such, a man from any land, any nationality, gender, color, or anything else. A man vulnerable in the face of eternity."