Drama in one act
The library of the Slovenian Theatre Institute has two copies of the typescript of the play. RevengeThe first copy has the inscription in the upper right corner prompter and the year 1926. Both copies have the cast listed in the cast list. The duplicate has the stamp of the Danilo Costume Rental Company, and below it a handwritten note (In New York 1926):
Kristan's letter to Avgusta Danilova, who, like Kristan, lived in the USA in 1926, has also been preserved. Kristan invites Avgusta and her daughter Silva to his home. They are said to read the text that has just been completed together. They are also said to be joined by the actor Rajner Hlača. The result of these arrangements was a New York production, in which Kristan, the Danilovas and the former intendant of the Trieste theatre, Rajner Hlača, also appeared, for whom Kristan had given the role of the villain, while he himself played the role of the tragic hero.
The writer, journalist and politician Etbin Kristan (1867 – 1953) was strongly connected with Slovenian theatre. He was a translator of dramatic texts, a theater critic, an actor and director, a member of the Drama Society, a lecturer at a drama school, an author of articles on drama and theater, and above all a playwright. His first plays Loyalty (1897) are still following The will (1902), Ljubislav (1906), Kato Vranković (1909), Reigning and Self-ownership (1910), Factory (1912), First meeting (1912), one-act plays Success, Who's crazy? and Club resignation, also published under the common title From Pavlih's legacy (1912). Before World War I, after the closure of the Provincial Theatre in the 1913/14 season, he went to the USA. After the war, he returned to the newly formed Yugoslavia for a short time and was elected to the Yugoslav Assembly on the Social Democratic Party ticket. He soon returned to the United States as Royal Commissioner for Emigrants, but was dismissed from this position in 1927. In the USA, he founded and led the Slovenian Republican Association for three decades and worked as a journalist and cultural figure. Among other things, he was also the president of the Slovenian-American National Council and editor of the newspaper Cankarjev glasnik (Cleveland).
He returned home shortly before his death. In the United States, he wrote more plays Bomb in the factory (1915), Don't be fooled. (1918), Revenge (1926), Master (1937), At the last hour (1937), A rekindled memory (1938), Silk stockings (1939), On the birth chest (1942) and For a new world (1949).
One-act play Revenge takes place in the salon of Princess Trubnova in New York, where she is visited by friends: an American, a Russian and a Slovenian, her compatriot, because before her marriage her name was Belič and she came to America as a young emigrant. The princess, because his father is said to have made her mother unhappy, which ultimately turns out to be a mistake, uses intrigue to drive him to despair: due to excitement and disappointment, the young painter suffers a stroke and dies. Kristan was certainly also inspired by his great role model Ibsen in shaping the character of the main character, although he Revenge brought her closer to Strindberg's heroines. We encounter a similar character, the stepmother, in Kristan's early work, in the drama The will. The princess's behavior, due to her capriciousness and confusion, is indeed reminiscent of the behavior of Ibsen's female characters, but her irrationality is completely subordinate to evil. The wicked woman is helped by a depraved Russian, Ivan Nikolayevich Chibyakov. In exchange for his perverted help, the princess promises him marriage, but in the end she realizes that she loves the man she has just tortured to death. The destruction of the unfortunate painter and the untried archaeologist does not give them any satisfaction, but rather plunges them into despair, because Trubnova eventually abandons Chibyakov and wails in boundless sorrow.
The drama was published in the magazine Borec (vol. 54, no. 598/602, 2002, pp. 105-131).