an idyllic comedy about the magic of childhood
“Our parents think that when I grow up I’m going to sit in an office all warm and cosy, that people will doff their hats to me and I’ll lick their stamps for them all day. And then I’ll send out for a hot dog. Well, I don’t like the sound of that. Most of all, I’d like to work at the Bejvals’ as a groom, ‘cos I’d get to wear a leather apron and I’d have a brass earring in my ear to ward off the evil eye...” Do you know who this is? Of course you do. This little wise guy is the shopkeeper’s son Petr Bajza, the hero of Karel Poláček’s last and most famous book. And just add the other “boys we hang out with” – Antonín Bejval, Éda Kemlink, Čeněk Jirsák and Zilvar from the workhouse – and that makes five of them. And they’re ready to get into fights with the boys from the neighbouring villages, to go on a secret visit to the local cinema, and to dream of a trip to distant India...
Karel Poláček created this idyllic picture of a boy’s life at a time when he was experiencing difficult personal moments during the Second World War. In the book, he returned to a small town similar to his native Rychnov nad Kněžnou at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and again demonstrated his irresistible feeling for linguistic wit. His little narrator Bajza comments on the world around him and the humorous episodes in his surroundings with delightful precociousness and the unshakable logic of a child. We Were a Handful offers a charming return to the harmony of a carefree childhood, when the world still appears clear and well-ordered and every problem seems small and easy to solve.
This charming kaleidoscope of situations that repeat themselves from generation to generation and that we all know from our own childhood was staged for our theatre by director Mikoláš Tyc, one of its regular guests.
