Marcin Wierzchowski’s play is inspired by Andrew Jarecki’s documentary “Capturing the Friedmans”. The film tells the story of the Friedman family whose life is turned upside down when the father, Arnold, and youngest son Jesse are arrested and accused of child molesting.

The case of the Friedmans – despite its American character – steps beyond a narrow cultural framework and is interwoven with the spirit of ancient Greek tragedy. The sum of the elements making the story – breaking of taboos, an individual’s fault, the court, splits within the family, community uniting against the offenders, the sacrifice made by the culprit for his son – determine its theatrical and cross-cultural character. Theatre is a medium that has the power to extract from this story what must have been suppressed in the film. The fact that the show will take place 7,000 km from the place of the actual events only strengthens the universality of the message.
[The performance] takes the audience on a journey, without promising how the journey will end or what the cost will be. The show takes over the viewers’ emotions, demanding something even more difficult than the actors. They have to face us strangely vulnerable, cast away all the tricks of the profession. Put away acting and expose intimacy, obviously remaining in character the whole time. I admit I have not felt so drawn into a play for a long time, entering into its world so intensely it felt like being (along with other voyagers like me) a part of it. We suddenly feel a connection with the weird Friedmans; maybe they even become close. Regardless of what they did or did not do.
Gazeta Prawna, Jacek Wakar
“Secret Life of the Friedmans” is also a performance with outstanding acting. The actors face us strangely vulnerable, as if stripped of acting, deprived of all tricks of the game. They display intimacy. For the viewer, entering this world is almost a necessity, a very intense experience. We poke around the protagonists, sit next to them, they chat us up on the way to subsequent locations. We form a bond with them, and in a moment it turns out that nothing is as it seems. The magic of the theatre or the illusion of life?

Teatr dla Was, Magda Mielke