When we enter the room, the students are sitting around the table. There are twelve of them, the thirteenth, the master is not there with them. In the middle, we can see his servant, Galgüt, with his leading the others get into the ceremony. They, the table, the glasses of different colours (or filled with different liquids) on it are enlighten with filtered lights. The devotional seriousness of the ceremony can be felt. There is tension in the air, the audience can feel the silence before the explosion even thought they do not know Ghelderode’s play.

Ghelderode is a hard writer, not only for the Hungarian theatre which is based on realistic traditions, but anyway too. Its „hardness” cannot be explained by traditional stage patterns. However its poetic strength is fascinating, the lack of its scenic experience is obvious, anyway this night does not belong to the poetic genius, who is dilettante from the point of view of the stage. Ghelderode’s play has dramatic accelerator, glowing tension in them, their metaphors and symbols have their meaning on stage too. However, their theoretical mind-set can make their situations complicated sometimes, and can make some pictures and scenes didactic, but it can be cured by bigger and smaller dramaturgical interventions. The main problem is the layering of these plays; in case of Ghelderode everything can be led back to ontological reasons, but they appear only in the deeper layers of the drama, their illustration is a hard exercise, without them the meaning of the play can become really simplified. Most of his plays (the short and closed Escurialra as much as the long and opened Barabbas, or even in the present performed School for Fools) typically show a ritualised world, in the depth of it the uncontrollable, magical instincts live, and they break open and explode the disciplined world of the forms. Therefore the style and the tone is really eclectic, and only one layer (one tone) can appear in the play, which does not only simplify the meaning of the play but can easily make the play incomprehensible (mostly this happened with the second performance of Ghelderode’s play: titled The Grim Reaper is roaming, the play with its new translation became a partly funny satiric performance, which could not get its meaning).

One of the important worth of Maladype’s performance, directed by Zoltán Balázs, that they could find a form, with the help of which the layering can be shown properly. Of course, I do not think that the director would want to solve the Ghelderode-issue, because obviously he did not search a troupe for this play, but a play for the troupe. Moreover, the play itself appears in the performance as a material, a starting point. However, the troupe turns to the text with the awareness, indicated by multilingualism. For outsiders there is not any importance of the fact that the Maladype works as a Gypsy ethnic troupe. (If the performance in a direct way, despite of the theatrical forms uses the ethnic identity, it can be interpreted as folklore.)

Their Gypsy identity (or its symbolic meaning) otherwise gets an emphasized function. The community of the play is locked of the world, and they form a Gypsy group, the members of which are cut from their roots, who were raised up in a culture, totally different from their genes. The riot against the Master, is the riot of the instincts too. Which is, in case of Ghelderode, the conflict between the monastery life and the desire for the worldly existence, here is the clash between the elevated but strange culture and the instinctive one, their own, mostly eradicated identity. Its devastating force is even greater because it happens inside the person (and the community), so it is against not only Folial but the community too.

According to the basic conception the performance uses three languages. Only the Master and Galgüt’s dialogues are in Hungarian, the ceremonies, shown at the beginning of the play, use Latin, while the rebellious fools speak Gypsy. Besides the verbal appearance of the layering, the director can change the mechanism of acceptance: the audience is unable to try to understand all the little moments of the play, they have to feel the direction of the play instead: the strength and devotion of the ritual ceremonies, the strength of the Gypsies which can explode it, the process of raising up gut feelings, the enthusiastic joy of the play, the shocking feeling of the lack of secret. All of it is mediated by a well-built gesture language, and musicality which penetrate the whole performance. This musicality can be felt in the verbal speech too: Galgüt and the students’ dialogue is made live and tensed by the changing tones and different accents. The musicality of the speech is completed by real music: the voices made by the glasses indicates the later free music and rhythm. After the students take off their uniforms, there is a colourful group in front of us: from there on with the release of identity the play and music release too at the same time. The rhythm is given by a pot, used on a virtuous way, the monastery movement and speech which are strictly structured are replaced by movement and speech which are self-oblivious, freely and personally applied. But with it not only the group but the individuals too can become conscious. Besides the taking of the uniforms, it is indicated by the playing with a (invisible for the audience) ball: who gets the toy, immediately get out of the community. From now on, we can understand the ending of the play, which indicates that there is no mythical secret, people can find this secret only in themselves. The real secret is not that Folial is not that one he seems to, but the confrontation with the reality, which finally resulted in the fall of the Master (but probably not that way, how Galgüt planed it before), it does not reveal anything; everybody has to come up against their own secret, like Folial does it. This ending may be a little bit commonplace (which is not Ghelderode’s, but Zoltán Balázs’s invention) but has an exceptionally strong theatrical effect: after being confronted with the puppet show, Folial (who according to Balázs’s version, is Folial’s daughter) falls of the platform, gets the curtains with himself too, behind them there is nothing, more punctually we can see the Danube-Bend at night.

The well-built theatrical language would have small effect, it was not for the actor group, who can use it on a high standard. The play has effectively two characters who rise up from the group: Folial and Galgüt. The earlier is formed by Erzsébet Soltész with sensitivity towards the grotesque and tragedy, without any frills, the other one is played by Erika Molnár with her intensity and vibe. The group of the fools is played by eleven actors - Zoltán Oláh, Balázs Dévai, Oszkár Nyári, Éva Bakos, Nóra Parti, János Balog, Artúr Kálid, Kriszta Sárközi, Kristóf Horváth, Kamilla Fátyol, Hermina Fátyol – and they form a heterogeneous troupe from any point of view. Between them we can find actors of prestigious professional theatres, and amateurs who are starting to practice theatrical playing. During the play the professional differences cannot be felt, the actors on stage show a perfect interplay, from which any of them can step out significantly from time to time. They take care of one another, build on each other, it can be felt that this play is important for them, in that way the identity of the play can get through the strictly constructed form.

Personality and technology, constructive invention and performer strength, intellectuality and passion are connected really fortunately to each other in the performance, which stands out the offer of the season because of the building of a theatre language which differs from the common ones, and the formation of workshop of the troupe, and which can prove the possibility to perform Ghelderode’s plays.

Balázs Urbán, Criticai Lapok, 2003

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)