Imagine a break up, where there is no shouting, throwing of the plates, only just a left jacket of a suit in the bedroom, and a husband, who decides to take revenge with the finest psychological horror. In a summary and on the surface, this is the story of the short-story of The Suit, written by the South-African Can Themba, which has been put on stage by the Maladype Theatre, led by Zoltán Balázs, director – together with Adrián Kovács, composer – as a smothery, but very stylish jazz-opera, which you cannot forget for a while.

There is a moment, when in a marriage nothing has to be said, the silence can settle everything. The plates are not broken, there are not any slammed doors, the husband does not shout with his wife...just a suit left there, a suit of an unknown man. The lover’s one, who in his hurry left the evident behind, and the husband decides not to throw it away. Why would he do it? The revenge is the best, if it cannot end. A slap hurts just once, a shot can kill once. But a suit remains in the room, and he can punish with it again every morning.

The South-African short-story, which was written in 1963, seeming a self-mythology with a closed chain: the unfaithful wife, the husband, who has caught her and the escaping lover’s left suit. In reality it can show us the soul-destroying everyday life in the once black cultural district of Sophiatown, Johannesburg – it was the symbolic place of the social and political violence of the apartheid era. The short-story is exactly about the dictature, which is led into intimacy: that moment, when the logic of the outside power has not threatened from outside any more, it has moved into the flat, and tells us how to behave. The Suit is the costume of this power, as power does never consist simply of lows and actions of police, its greatest success is always when it does not have to force from outside, people do terrible things with each other, as the husband does it with his wife.

The first adaptation of the story was in 1994, at the beginning of the falling of the apartheid in the Market Theatre of Johannesburg, then Peter Brook, one of the most effective British director of theatre history put it on stage twice. First in 1999 in Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, then in 2012 he made another version at Marie-Hélène Estienne, and with Franck Krawczyk with live music score. The story has theatrical past, but Zoltán Balázs does not repeat this past, he has translated it into his own theatrical language, into the language of Maladype.

In Balázs’ theatre it is rare just to “perform” something. An actor does not simply step into a situation, but gets into a system instead. The movement is ruled, the place is structured, the body exists only in a choreography. From his earlier works, for example the objective world of the King Ubu or from the musical-physical discipline of Leonce and Lena his aims are well-known: people sooner or later become puppets and the objects become characters. Now he almost has an easy work, the suit is an empty human form, without body it can imitate a body. It is presented instead of someone else, while he becomes threatening with his lack. It is a property and individuality at the same time, a proof and a punishing tool. The object slowly gets the place of a human, and the husband becomes the justice.

“Zoltán Balázs’ theatre does not let us watch it from the comfort of a real drama of a marriage, the stage is a construction, the body is a sign, the movement is rule. That is why The Suit can become a jazz-opera.”

Adrián Kovács’ music does not paint some African feeling on the story, as the South-African nature should be proved with some exotic tunes. The music is much cleverer than this, it can organise the play from inside. The rhythm can give the movement, the sounding can give the tension, the repetition is to show its closeness. Jazz can express freedom and the loss of it at the same time. The world of the once Sophiatown can be heard as we can hear its disappearance in it at the same time. The most beautiful cruelty of the performance is, that the music of freedom slowly becomes the music of prison. In jazz there is always an attempt to escape, the rhythm escapes, the tune bends, the instrumental music improvises. In Adrián Kovács’ music behind the improvisation the structure is still there. As someone can move freely in his cell, however, the walls of it cannot be seen, but Matilda, the wife knows well where are they and she moves according to it.

Csilla Radnay does not perform the destruction with one huge tragic gesture. Something worse happens to her; the world is getting narrower around her. She still has body, but she has not got any freedom. She can still speak, but behind the sentences fewer decision can remain. She tries to get normality back into their life, as it can be got back, which she has lost, with playfulness, kindness, and the small rites of everyday life. It cannot happen, the dictatorship – it can be political or marital – does not want you to obey, it wants you not to be able to imagine the disobedience.

“Philemon by Barna Kelemen Bányai is not an inarticulate, shouting tyrant, there is something elegant in him, some kind of gentleman-like peace.”

He practices cruelty with intelligence and not with anger. He does not lose, he practices control, that can make him horrible. Behind his ordinary politeness there is a concentration camp, behind his smile, there is discipline, behind the etiquette of the marriage there is an execution. Barna Kelemen Bányai can perform the elegant fulfiller of systemic oppression, meanwhile he keeps the mask of the elegant man; he forces his wife for psychological self-destruction like he would do a social protocol.

The suit is in the middle, as a third person, who does not need to speak. Ferenc Fehér’s presence can create a strange duality. The lover is presented and not at the same time. His body is saved by the cloth and his personality is replaced by the cloth, the lack can become a character. This is an old trick of theatre: to give life to something, which is lifeless. But here the trick turns the other way around, the lifeless object can take life from the living ones. Philemon does not only punish Matilda, he wants to change the reality, he wants to make the woman accept: the suit has the right to be there, it must be taken care of, they must talk to it and it deserves respect. The nonsense has become obligation, that is how the power is formed, first it changes the rules than finally what we can feel to be normal.

Zoltán Balázs has psychologized over the process. He does not explain it, why Philemon is evil, and why Matilda is a victim. He chooses a more theatrical solution: he closes them into a system of rules.

“The space has turned into a ritual arena, where the movements have their own law, as the music does.”

People cannot just step out of the choreography. As the marriage has been choreographed basically, but while one of the partners has known the steps, the other one has not had music yet. The South-African story slowly leaves its own geography. Sophiatown remains behind it, as the historical shadow of apartheid too. But the question is not about that what has happened in South-Africa, but that how familiar the mechanism is. The dictatorship does not have to start on the streets and does not always arrive in uniform...sometimes in suit.

That is why the choice of the genre of jazz-opera is so accurate. The jazz has historical memories about freedom, meanwhile on the stage we can listen to the gradual loss of freedom. The beauty of the music cannot ease the story, but it makes it even more cruel. The viewers almost feel ashamed that they can enjoy it, while they can feel well, that something irreversible is happening, the horrible one becomes a form. Maybe it is the most important statement of Zoltán Balázs’ staging, that cruelty is not always chaotic. It can be elegant, punctual, aesthetic, there can be rules to it. At the end of the performance, tragedy does not simply happen, it is performed as an accurately written musical movement, which all moments have already returned, all the instruments have arrived, and in the end nothing else remains than the final chord. But now it is not the music, which dies, but the human being, Matilda, but the suit remains.

The performance is ritual, thanks for the strict theatrical language it does not remain a far away, South-African story, it becomes a universal model about the human cruelty. How can vengefulness and mania of control destroy systematically the most intimate human relationships, as dictatorship does not stop outside the walls of the house, it gets into the most intimate sphere too.

According to its visuality and musicality the performance is excellent, while it does not let me calm down for days.

Izabella Andrea Cseh, PRAE.HU, 2026

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)