''An entirely remarkable event in two acts'', is the subtitle that Gogol gave to his play. The specific and a bit elusive wittiness of the Russian classic, one of the few that haven't been questioned neither by the realists, nor the modernists, is visible in the very title, and the opening lines by Podkolysin, with the seriously-funny: ''You live and you live until eventually everything becomes sickening,'' introduce a unique character of the writer and his text. We are dealing with a comedy, but the tragedy is intrinsic to Gogol's dramatic mentality and no matter how much laughter he gives us, he cannot pass up the opportunity to speak of man's anxiety, emptiness and loneliness. That is why he was such a wonderful writer, called by Nietzsche ''the founder of modern decadence'', an author over whom, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, the Russians and the Ukranians fought, wanting him ''for themselves'', that is, claiming he belonged precisely to their - and only their - national literature. At first thinking he would become a clerk, because ''it is more useful for Russia'', Gogol fortunately couldn't resist the call of writing, so during his life he travelled the path from being an underestimated outsider to becoming the most famous Russian writer, ending his life in pain and depression, due to which he burned all of his unpublished work, among whom was the second part of the legendary Dead Souls. Though he left this world at the age of only 43, he left behind him enough immortal lines, among whom we can most definitely find those written on the pages of the Marriage.

A square-headed child provokes an argument resembling those from Italian movies; a love scene involving a young 'ustasha' member; a partisan theatre and a passionate meeting in a blackberry patch; political accusations and torture; a marriage breakdown; then old age and a dancing hall... A nursing home, as an ''ideal camp for all our xenophobias, yet such a touching, tepid place'' (D. Spišić) where we ''dispose of our elderly'' a little bit like old batteries or used plastic bottles, serves as a mirror of the society in which we live in. A society where we reluctantly accept the other and the different and where we move the weak ones aside because they're in our way, because we don't have time for them... A play by Dubravko Mihanović is staged by Oliver Frljić, currently one of the most praised directors in the region.

''A good play is not possible without the internal psychological volume, serving as an instrument, and the actor, as the player of that instrument... I decided to write dialogues... with the intention to stretch the internal charge of the psychological tension to the biggest possible impact, and then to move these impacts as close to the reflection of our reality as possible.'', wrote Krleža in his book "Moj obračun s njima", using these foundations to form one of the three plays of the "Glembay cycle" - Leda. Subtitled as a ''comedy of a carnival night'', Leda seems to elude those who wish to determine its genre, turning from a drawing room play into a ''romantic play'' and from there into an ironic melodrama. All of these attributes can seem related, but the fact remains that it is a text which was, more than once, left not read through sufficiently, depriving us on the stage of that which it so playfully and wisely speaks of on paper. The reason for it might lay in the fact that the disecting and disassembling of the mechanisms of human relationships in Leda was carried out in a ''conversationally informal'' manner, which is but a form. For the truth is, that the existential anxiety of the characters of this play is frighteningly deep, whereas their ''unbearable lightness of being'' is so contemporary that we have the impression like we've stepped into a text that has been written now, in the vacuum of the beginning of the 21st century.

Crime, prostitution, alcoholism and poverty on the one hand, contrasted with the roaring success achieved through the instant rise to fame on the other, are taking this text to etremes, which Glowacki skillfully tones down with humour, as well as with typical Slavic warmth and the desire for something different, to be different.

Dundo Maroje is definitely the finest and the most famous of all Držić's comedies. It belongs to the very top of dramatic literature ever written in the Croatian language and it is no overstatement to say that it has a place in the pantheon of European renaissance literature in general. Extraordinarily precise, yet infinitely playful and ''unbridled'', this play is so powerful primarily because of the gallery of picturesque characters, who are guided by the author, who knows exactly what he needs each character for and what message each of them carries. Over 20 'personae', mostly from Dubrovnik, seek in renaissance Rome the satisfying of lust, money paid back or the defense of honour, fighting for what they hold dear by all means necessary and led by the Machiavellian doctrine in which ''the cause justifies the means''.

''It is as grandious and complex as the labyrinths within the palaces of his humour.'' This was once written about the work of the great French and one of the world's greatest comediographers, Jean Baptiste Pouqelin, in literary history remembered as Moli?re, the son of a wealthy royal upholsterer, owner of a law-degree and a passion of an actor and a writer. Don Juan, The Misanthrope, The Miser, The Immaginary Invalid... are but a few of his master-pieces that have been performed since the 17th century, not showing even a trace of fatigue. For human stupidity is eternal and, it seems, indestructible and Moliere's texts feverishly seek to unravel it, whether it is about the insane passion for money, manic cherishing of the cult of integrity, frantic self-admiration, or about the distrust and the hate towards the human kind.