Neglected for decades, the ramshackle national theatre shuts its doors

Big surprise. This is how employees of the Slovak National Theatre (SND) describe every performance that they have performed in recent years at the very old theatre building in the centre of Bratislava.

They never knew what would happen the next evening.

Would everything work? Would all the lights be on? Or would a new problem occur and need to be fixed quickly? They could not even be sure of actors being able to react quickly to a problem arising in the middle of a performance.

The last time the historical building hosted a performance was last autumn. Then all the theatres had to interrupt the season because of a second pandemic wave.