However, the worlds of the performance, The Kitchen, which was staged by Zoltán Balázs in Nyitra, in the Andrej Bagar Theatre and of the performance, Paranoia in the Théâtre des Lucioles in Rennes are totally different from point of view of their topics and vision, the common thing in them, is that they fill with playfulness the frames of the chosen strict form. Divadelná Nitra festival, part 3.

Arnold Wesker wrote The Kitchen in 1959. Between the long Introduction before the play and the advices to the director – for which he apologised in the first sentence – he said: “Shakespeare would consider the world to be a stage, I consider it to be a kitchen, where the opponents cannot understand each other, and where, because of the continuous running and moving even the flashing straw torches of friendship, love and argument can blow out soon.” (translated by Tibor Bartos) He characterizes the roles for long, he tells their positions in the kitchen, their ages, their nationalities too. If we just take into consideration these later ones, we can tell, that this kitchen of an English restaurant, would be able to get an interesting stich in the today united Europe, as from the continent, even nowadays many people go to get a job on the other side of the channel. That way, the originally realistic – but not naturalist – context would get a new meaning.

Then the director can get inspiration from the very popular gastro realities too, from Jamie Oliver’s series, in which he introduces disadvantaged youngsters into the word of work in a kitchen, until Gordon Ramsay’s programme, where he reform restaurants, coloured with profanities. The viewers can meet a familiar world on stage this time too, and they would face up with still a realist – and not a naturalist – world as well.

Zoltán Balázs has chosen a way, much more different from these: he successfully adapted his characteristic eastern, meditative mood and the strictly defined world of movements, between the frames of so-called kitchen sink drama. (Or the other way around.) He gets important help from Péter Polgár set and costume designer, who with this work has got the awards of Dosku, so Stage by the Slovakian critics, in both categories.

The stage is the middle of the studio hall of about ten metres diagonal of the theatre of Nyitra. The stage, which can be white, circular pan, a plate of a scale, a pancake, baking board, chopping board, is covered by a material, which is greyish white, has strange consistence, mostly similar to stone broken into dust, which make the viewers associate clearly into flour in an unmarked place of a kitchen. In it – obviously for practical reasons – the actors are moving (bare) foot covered with bandage, but with it they refer to the sacral nature of the place too. In the middle of the place, a wok like deepening plate with a very big diameter is the sink, which must be tidy. (It is not an accident that Peter from the performance, gives out his anger in this beautifully swept up and raked place.) There are piled up white plates around him, by the outside arc there are golden discs hanged from the ceiling, these can be cymbals, which can give sounds, baking pans and always swinging scales at the same time.

We can say, with our already mentioned knowledge from television, that the world of the chef’s dresses does not consists of just white, it is made softer and more modern by some colours. In this kitchen, the male actors of the troupe of Nyitra, are wearing T-shirts, which let us see their muscles, and a stylish version of the skirt like parts of samurai’s kimono instead of “normal” aprons – they unite east, tradition, working uniform, modern male fashion in themselves. The waitresses are in “waitress like” unified miniskirts, in similar black wigs, they are moving like urban geishas. On the top of hierarchy Marango is sitting in her burning red chair like a tennis or volleyball referee, the owner, who has faded, but emphasised her femininity with black and lace (yes, she is a woman), and she is leafing through with fake carelessness, lazily the Financial Times, the glossies, dealing with home design and the profession.

At the beginning of the performance, everybody is sitting in strict position, in piece or searching for it, and when the work begins, the gold coloured kitchen tools are appearing, and the material, which covers the stage becomes a kitchen ingredient. During the preparation of the meticulous food of sand – not stylized but realistically – the childishness and playfulness, the phases of creation-preparation-destruction and the necessary powers for it are condensed. And on the unstable surfaces – standing on the chopping block, on the cinder – the practiced, routine like movements, which are concentrated and economical at the same time, can refer to the frustration because of the present, and a desire for a better life too. The rhythm of the hour gets strictly faster, we cannot get enough from the actors, only some characteristics, but it is obvious, that they serve the director’s and the viewers’ orders.

Tímea Papp, Fidelio, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)