the format, explained
The Revue Tradition Sabat Belongs To
Warsaw had its own line of revue theatres long before Sabat — a tradition of nightly numbers, quick changes and house writers that ran through the interwar years.
Check availability ↗Two houses that came before Sabat
| House | Active | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Qui pro quo | 1919-1931 | Warsaw's best-known interwar revue cabaret, with writers including Julian Tuwim and Marian Hemar |
| Perskie Oko / Morskie Oko | From 1925, closed 1933 | A breakaway house founded after a split with Qui pro quo's management |
Qui pro quo, the house that set the tone
Qui pro quo opened on 4 April 1919 in the basement of the Galeria Luxemburga on Senatorska Street, founded by Bolesław Leszek Przyłucki, Tadeusz Sobocki and Izydor Weisblat, with composer and writer Jerzy Boczkowski running the artistic side. It stayed open until 1931 and became the reference point for Warsaw revue — a nightly programme of sketches, songs and dance numbers rather than a single play.
The writers behind the numbers
Qui pro quo's house writers included Julian Tuwim, Marian Hemar, Konrad Tom and Jerzy Jurandot — names that carried well beyond the theatre itself into Polish popular song and comic writing more broadly. A revue house of this kind lived or died on a steady supply of fresh material, week after week, which is part of why the writing talent it kept on staff mattered as much as the performers on stage.
The performers who came through
Zula Pogorzelska, Hanka Ordonówna, Mira Zimińska, Adolf Dymsza, Eugeniusz Bodo and Kazimierz Krukowski all began or built their careers through Qui pro quo — several went on to substantial careers in Polish film and cabaret beyond the theatre's own stage.
A rival house: Morskie Oko
In September 1925, a group of actors split from Qui pro quo's management and founded a rival revue house, first named Perskie Oko and soon renamed Morskie Oko, associated with the writer and producer Andrzej Włast. It ran until 1933 — a shorter life than Qui pro quo's, but evidence that Warsaw could support more than one revue stage at once during the interwar years.
A format built on turnover
What both houses shared was structure rather than story: an evening built from a run of shorter numbers — songs, sketches, dance pieces — refreshed on a rolling basis rather than staged as a single unchanging production for a long run. That's the same basic shape Sabat's own revue takes, decades later and in a different building, even if the specific writers and performers have no direct line back to either house.
Where Sabat fits in
Sabat doesn't claim a direct institutional descent from Qui pro quo or Morskie Oko — both had closed by the mid-1930s, long before Sabat opened in the early 2000s. What it shares with them is the format itself: dancers, singers and musicians in a sequence of numbers, staged for an audience seated at tables rather than in rows, in a tradition Warsaw largely lost after the interwar years and that Sabat is one of the few houses in Poland still staging nightly.