Devil’s Bride is a musical drama exploring eternity, passion, youth, and the fear of losing everything. Inspired by Arūnas Žebriūnas’s iconic film, the life and legacy of actress Vaiva Mainelytė, the intimate cinematic language of John Cassavetes, and Kazys Boruta’s novella Baltaragis’s Mill, the production delves into how collective myths shape our identities.
Playwright and director Naubertas Jasinskas explains: “We’re crafting an entirely new interpretation of Devil’s Bride—not a restaging of Boruta’s work or a youthful remake of the film. This production asks whether reconstruction is an act of love for the past or a failure to create and exist in the present. It resonates today because we live in a culture obsessed with re-enactment, nurturing a precarious relationship with memory. The urge to restore, remake, return becomes a haven that allows us to avoid confronting the present.”
In the performance, fairy tale and reality intertwine into a single whole: the old story of Jurga, Girdvainis, Baltaragis, Uršulė, and Pinčiukas is transferred to the world of today's music industry, rehearsals, and concerts. Here, the characters are both mythical types and reflections of contemporary people. The story is constructed through the perspective of young Jurga. The world that Jurga once longed to conquer is becoming empty, and pleasure no longer fills it. Her father Baltaragis, a music business owner, tries to maintain control, her beloved Girdvainis finds himself at a moral crossroads, and Uršulė is a figure of constant trial and failure, whose unfulfillment becomes a warning to Jurga. The producer (Pinčiukas) also gets involved in the action, reminding us that fame and success always come at a price. As a counterpoint to the devilish cunning, Angel and Vaiva Mainelytė appear throughout the work, their dialogues becoming a reflection on human life, its meaning, and the balance between good and evil.
The play, inspired by a range of sources, unfolds in two parts. The first immerses the audience in the memory of the legendary film Devil’s Bride—not only as a staged reconstruction, but as the inner recollection, longing, and dream of an ageing actress. From reflections on indifference, we move on to the second part – a concert in which we see not the fulfillment promised by cultural myth, but its collapse. The second part of the performance shows that the long-awaited "happily ever after" never came. It is a contemporary reflection on the power of time, the discrepancy between memory and reality, and the painful necessity to look at the myth without romanticized longing.
A co-production between the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre (LNDT) and MMLAB.
