The play’s the thing in this tepid Polish comedy-drama that catches the conjugal complications of its protagonist. Self-righteous theatre actor Marcin (Łukasz Simlat), is mid-run playing Captain Hook in a production of Peter Pan. His terminally unhappy wife Ola (Agnieszka Duleba-Kasza) announces she is off; then, as their argument spills into the theatre wings where she is playing Tinkerbell, she reveals that she previously slept with someone else. Ziemovit/Peter Pan (Dobromir Dymecki) looks sheepish – before being opportunely hoisted out of reach on wires.
A few months down the line, Marcin is essaying Torvald in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House opposite his new love Ewa (Wiktoria Filus) as Nora. But when she falls down a trapdoor, guess who is substituted into the role? The tension is ratcheted up when Marcin and Ola once again find themselves leading the bill as sparring Oberon and Titania, in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on which their company’s future rests.
Despite the agitated farce of the first section, in which the spat erupts on stage in front of aghast kids expecting light panto, it seems director and co-writer Michal Grzybowski is more an Ibsen man, with a fairly sombre take on adult relationships. The film however is stolidly literal in what it suggests about life feeding into art; not just in the suddenly extra-fruity Hook/Pan rivalry, but in how Marcin chokes in the A Doll’s House rehearsals when it is Ola he has to summon passion for. With only a little light humour (a pair of backstage thesps eternally bickering about DeNiro; Marcin’s dad never making good on his threats to quit the company), Seasons falls short of the playful Shakespearean intertwining of world and stage it invokes.
Simlat does at least have the opportunity for some technically complex work simultaneously showcasing the theatrical role and the actor behind it: he subtly tweaks his features to suggest someone who never passes up an opportunity to let life intrude on his craft, far beyond what his method-advocating director wants. But with Grzybowski also opting for a wistful Woody Allen-esque outro, it feels as if the director, like Marcin, has commitment issues when it comes to tone.
• Seasons is on Viaplay from 5 February.
