Maladype – Encounters Theatre – solved the accepted exercise. School for Fools, which was performed in Szkéné Theatre, is proved to be a permanent experience. The actors play Ghelderode’s play in Latin, Hungarian and Gypsy language. Because only a few of us can understand all the three languages, the performance can show that theatre still can be as much as ceremonial as a mental exercise.

The students in the school for fools would like to know the secret, about which all education should be. To learn the secret of life they are even intended to kill. They want to kill their master, the best of all the fools. They think – maybe that is why they are still students – that the secret can be told by words. In the parallel story the medieval mood is changed by the air of our everyday life: the castle walls of Judit Gombár’s set are mossy and suddenly they are turned into mouldy cottages, and the Gypsy children, who are playing with a ball, are searching for the secret. And what is the secret? It turns out too at the end of the play: the veil, which covers the glass wall of Szkéné, falls down, and in the dark background suddenly enters the city with its lights, rivers and bridges. There is a human body in front of it. The secret is nearer than we can think.

The two main characters’, Erzsébet Soltész and Erika Molnár’s strong and suggestive performances suit well into Zoltán Balázs’s concept as a director: the theatre is more than group of words told on the stage.

Csaba Horváth, Válasz.hu, 2003

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)