Alabama

One of the finest Croatian texts written in the last few years, Davor Špišić's Alabama is a shocking and moving story of the ''urban Pannonia'', an area inhabited by warm, witty and melancholic people, who have survived the war and are now trying to survive the postwar period. Imbued with authentic sadness and a gentle, warming humour, this text, among other things, is a peace-offering and as such has a healing effect on those who are willing to surrender to it. Directed by Dario Harjaček, the director of such notable titles as ''Three Sisters'' and ''The Piano Teacher'', Alabama addresses the audience directly and inquiringly, willing to talk about the reality that hurts us and yet we continue to live it. It has been written about this text which won the ''Marin Držić'' award in 2008: ''Davor Špišić strives to put back together the fragments of a family, to reconcile the irreconcilable and bring back a glimpse of hope, which he eventually succeeds to do in the manner of a true craftsman.''

''The writing of Davor Špišić has too long remained exclusively tied to the geographical area he writes about. That's why Gavella's first peformance of Alabama is a welcome excursion of this, in many ways interesting, playwright to Zagreb's theatrical scene. ... Špišić's melancholic tragedy captures us with its atmosphere and masterly outlined characters out of whose relationships a barely durable unhappiness gushes out.'' (Matko Botić, Kulisa.eu)
''Particulary outstanding is the performance of Marina Nemet as Ruža, the mother of the young man Goran who drops out of school in Alabama at the age of seventeen, because his parents, immigrants, cannot afford a private high-school. Cuts deep underneath the conventional readings of crime and
punishment.'' (Nataša Govedić, ''Novi list'')
''In short: Gavella once again has an excellent, though not at all light production, and the biggest credit for that goes to the self-denying Marina Nemet. The role of the mother who goes around carrying her son's ashes and sees him in front her eyes all the time, the mother who in the end finally decides that it is time to let her son go and have him back only in dreams, could have easily turned into indigestible pathos. Marina Nemet is miles away from it and she is truly the dame of this production.'' (Bojan Radović, ''Večernji list'')
''Reconcilliation and forgiveness which come in the end have a cathartic effect, which brings this production closer to its classical ancestors. Špišić and Harjaček, each in his own medium and in his own way, recreate the condition, not getting themselves into criticism of the existing condition.'' (Helena Braut, ''Vjesnik'')