Beyond tradition
Only the End of the World by Jean-Luc Lagarce is an extraordinarily interesting poetical-dramatic text, unique in its form, i.e. for the very well thought out relationship between the dialogues and monologues uttered by the characters, convincingly shaping the topics of this drama: provincial desperation, a lack of understanding between the people who are close family members, facing the past, etc. Therefore, the text is very challenging for stage interpretation - a fact amazingly skilfully exploited by director Vlatko Ilic, who has conceived a minute, minimalist play, made special by the uniqueness of the dramatic expression of the cast. Dressed in black (costumes by Jelena Mihajlovic), almost immobile, in an empty room defined by its bleakly common wallpaper (set design by Sinisa Ilic), the performers shape their characters - the members of one family: Louis (Mihailo Ladjevac), who returns to his hometown after a long time, his brother Antoine (Bojan Lazarov), sister Suzanne (Snezana Milojevic), Antoine’s wife Catherine (Dusica Sinobad) and mother (Jelica Vucinic). Louis is more self-confident, superior and cynical than the other characters, who are all obviously miserable and sadly stuck in this provincial nowhere. Their speech - mechanic, absentminded, flat, frequently indistinctive and too fast – convincingly embodies the notion of a total lack of mutual understanding, i.e. the senselessness of their communication.
The director underscores their distinctive psychic unbalance by their conspicuous tics: rapping with fingers, scratching, nervously playing with their rings... Among them all, for example, the character of Mother is a typical representative of this. The actress creates her character with a clear distance, manneristically depicting her forced, basically fake well-intentioned nature, thus exposing the true face of that kind of oily nice behaviour.
Only the End of the World, directed by Vlatko Ilic, definitely goes beyond the traditional dramatic theatre - a feature undoubtedly valuable in the context of Serbian mainstream production, determined by the domination of different versions of “well-tailored” plays and an occasional courageous experiment.
Ana TASIC (Politika, 26th June 2006)

Speech and other poses
(...) Vlatko Ilic develops a very radical directing concept, and on the contrary to what most of his peers do, he avoids imposing his concept upon the text, drawing it rather from the analysis of its dramatic form. He adds a theatrical emphasis to Lagrace’s gap between speech and communication, between speaking and understanding, by turning the characters into some kind of speech machines. Each character has its artificial speech structure - with speeding up, slowing down, fake sentimentality, mechanical breaks – thus avoiding, in the true sprit of Lehmann’s post-drama theatre, mimetism, narrativeness and psychology, introducing automated speech instead. By making speech independent and unusual, the director transforms all the characters into one or more social poses, cleansed from any individual, psychological content (for instance: artificial emphasis on the words they say and Sunday as expressions of middle-class faked modesty, i.e. middle-class glorification of a Sunday family gathering).
As an essential construction element of these poses, there are automated, obsessive postures and motions of body, alienated from speech, which show (bring to the surface) some of the social or psychological distinctions of the characters in a stylized, direct, even ironical manner: the feminine gestures of Louis’s body, probably infected with AIDS; the bourgeois fondling of the son’s hair and playing with rings; the young and rebellious daughter’s offensive stance... It would be very interesting to see, in a future theoretical discussion, if and to what extent these social poses match Brecht’s rather enigmatic notion of gestus. As these bodily postures are, in their stylized form, extremely static, they do not require much space, so the director and his set designer Sinisa Ilic have designed a small stage, only defined by sets with typically middle-class wallpaper and a matching carpet; the small dimension of the stage probably also comes as a result of a desire to make a close, almost voyeuristic insight into the broken idyll of a middle-class family. The accurate, discretely demarking costumes, stylized in black by Jelena Mihajlović, have a similar effect of purified minimalism. (...)

Ivan MEDENICA (Vreme No. 808, 29th June 2006)

The last play of the season brought us the largest, and I dare say, most pleasant surprise - the graduation play by Vlatko Ilic made after the text of the prematurely gone French dramatist Jean-Luc Lagarce. It is a play which offers a sharp analysis of a middle-class family and complicated interrelations in it, where the closest relatives fail to grasp the last chance to establish a human, emotional contact getting lost in a futile game of affirming their social roles which are surrogates for their non-existent identities. While we listen to the tirades which seemingly establish the social, societal and emotional position of a certain character, we actually witness the exposure of their miserable, senseless existences and we gradually come to understand why communication between the ones who are supposed to be the closest is actually impossible.
Ilić has radicalised this line of the text to its final consequences by his directing technique, placing his actors and actresses, dressed in black, against a simplistic yet symbolical background, limiting not only their space but movements as well, at the same time accentuating the natural interrelation between the characters (making their alienation unbearable), as well as the claustrophobic air of their home. Everything happening in this simplistic space has a complexity of meanings; each pause, stammer and acceleration in speech, each movement made by the performers, stylized yet accurate and clear (as in a close-up) provides a new piece of information on the characters, their desires and ambitions, tells us what they feel for one another. Small signals have the significance of a decision - a change in the speech rhythm unveils the emotional void or impotence. Among the truly excellent cast, it is Jelica Vucinic’s remarkable rendition of Mother that stands out. Sharp and furious, with the inspired cast and simple yet, for our environment, daring and uncompromisingly carried out concept, this play is the one which made the strongest impression on this text’s author in the last season. You must see it!

Boban JEVTIC (YellowCab, 8th September 2006)