Seemingly, the critics have been surprised by the choice itself: after Zoltán Balázs has gained his name by his unique ritual theatre with Ghelderode, Genet and Ionesco, and now what does he want to do with Ostrovsky who is an outstanding person of the Russian realism of the XIX. century?

The unusualness of the choice of the play is mentioned by all analysing writing in connection with The Tempest performance of Bárka and Maladype Theatre. The writers definitely mention this performance as a progress during the career of the director – everybody from different point of view of course. Tamás Koltai refers to the adjectives of his earlier writings which were about Balázs’ earlier works, when he talks about The Tempest: There is a dramatic composition instead of the pattern. There is a human experiment to grab human fates instead of the embroidery of style. According to Judit Csáki many things – almost everything – are there which we need not only to understand, but to be able to feel the greatness of the play, its raised tragedy, and its actuality which has effects even today. The critics notice and mention consistently the change and as a result of it there are many writings about this performance, as in case of Empedocles but even in case of Acropolis only fewer, many times in combative mood written reflections were published only.

Go back to Ostrovsky’s play: in connection with the emblematic masterpiece of drama literature (Koltai) László Zappe highlights that the play gets deeply into the Russian society of the middle of the XIX. century which is trying to get out of feudalism. Balázs Perényi’s analytic comment has already brought us closer to the nature of the direction: In Ostrovsky’s drama the visionary pictures, the imagined language, extremely tensioned scenes and extreme actions show the devastating tempest of soul that brings everything with it. Zoltán Balázs is characteristically that kind of director, who from one side goes stubbornly on his own way, from the other side he is consciously building and widening it, and which is hardly negligible for him as the leader of the troupe: he is continuously widening the possibilities of Maladype too. Next to Perényi, Gábor Pap emphasises the stubborn wanting of continuity, when during the introduction of his writing he talks about the strange, outside, almost divine optics, which is given to the viewers.

Pap similarly to the other performances, in The Tempest he can realise this almost Brecht-like tool of alienation. The illusion of watching in the film studio forms a nice distance between the viewers and the performance. The performance with the realistic recalling of the practical surrounding of a film shooting (the lighting technicians who are moving on camera cars, the marvellous lighting effects which are born in front of us and the strange effects of light, the emphasised costume-like costumes and the stressed set-like sets) seems to show off with its artificial style. According to Koltai’s summarised idea: It is a pure pseudo shooting in any film studio.

From there opera is only one leap away, the final genre of combination of extreme stylisation and fake realism. That is why Katya Kabanova by the Check Janácek, who based it on The Tempest, does not sound as pure background music, which must paint the characters’ feelings, moods, emotions (Perényi). According to Gábor Pap the combination with references to films means much more than this, as the biggest cheat of film art, which represents the realistic reality the most, it is the music, the music which sounds in the background. And really it is similar to the watching of any costume films.

According to Balázs Perényi the women seem to be the ancient pictures of each roles in Judit Gombár’s costumes, the men’s dresses are essential, as the dresses of figures on the cards. Tamár Tarján points to the similar direction: the same military like lines can be seen on the men’s and women’s dresses. The scissors have to cut only straight lines, and the needles march it. The costumes make us feel and analyse the same kind of overregulated rigid and cold world which is built by Zotlán Balázs. The frenetic set with its simplicity, the bridge which goes to nowhere, with the painted hills behind it, and the long-laid podium and the rigid landscape together with it are rich symbols too, they are the symbols of the stuck great decisions and jumps. (Zappe). According to Tarján the set can be made based on an early (the middle of the XIX. century) drawing by Csontváry. From Balázs Perényi’s point of view the wonderfully created prose-opera takes place in an expressionist painting of space or on the landscape of soul.

For this we need opera-like characters too. Judit Csáki emphasises that now we do not miss the showing of fates, however all through the performance the form language of there can be found in the foreground. Olga Varjú’s performing, who is always exciting, all writings appreciate: it is solid, hard, hypocritically ceremonial (Zappe), peacockish, a female great woman (Koltai). Next to the tyrannical mother and mother-in-law we can see the colourful, sensual woman (Csáki), the empress dowager-like, Kabanova, who is cheated by patient wickedness (Tarján). According to the summery of Gábor Pap the great woman is closer to Arkadina than to Bernarda.

Kátya Tompos’ play, who performs Kabanova’s daughter-in-law, quotes the symbol of death, the swan (Pap), her performance is ethereal (Tarján), fragile, fine, shaking (Zappe). Her stylised abstract death; it is a heroic picture – a light dressed woman upstairs in front of the gloomy sky -: it is pure Tosca (Perényi). For Tarján, her Russian good-bye song illustrates, on the language of musical notes, that immeasurable distance that divides her self-conscious, free desire for happiness, her self-acceptance from the others’ petty way of life.

Zoltán Balázs and the troupe of Maladype tell us mainly this fight between the passion from the deepness of slavery and freedom and the bossy, negligible outside world with demanding thinking, sophisticated culture of forms and punctual performance (Perényi). The performance is a reason by the truth of a person, who lives, fights his feelings rightfully and consistently – of the person who dies because of his one and only life (Tarján). And if we recognise it, we have not been so surprised why did they choose The Tempest this time.

Tamás Jászay, Revizoronline, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Zoltán Balázs, director left basically the Hungarian traditions of performing when he put on stage The Tempest by Ostrovsky with the troupe of Maladype in the Bárka Theatre. From one side he stresses “the artificiality” of it, but from the other side he strengthens its ironic-grotesque and tragic parts.

It is artistic. It is artificial, man-made, formed, not natural, not created, it is constructed by us. At the beginning of The Tempest one character reminds us to the opposite of everything: the pictures of endless nature, that he “has been looking at it for thirty-five years”. Anyway, Judit Gombár’s set, all elements of it and Zoltán Balázs’ conception as a director can form the most artificial context in the Fencing Hall of the Bárka Theatre: a prolonged slope leads up to the top of the huge podium, under which there is an arcaded place, with expressively leaning columns, and there is a huge painted pastel landscape behind it with mountains. Into it a lamp, which can be moved on a long rack, lights the moon at the beginning, from which (and from the technicians who use them) there are more in the place, that way those who are under can move on real tracks of real carriages.

It is an artificial hall. It is an artificially formed world. It does not create an illusion, or if it does then we become the characters of this illusion too. We are the voyeurs of an imagined shooting, anyway we are the viewers of an opera performance, but the artificial side is there too, as the sound of music – unusually from Balázs – are given by speakers now, so that the music can wreathe around the forming drama in front of us. We can always hear as background music the parts of the opera, Katya Kabanova, which was made based on Ostrovsky’s work, as it connects to the play and gives its emotional charge and rhythm.

Have you ever thought about that the greatest cheat of film art, which can show reality the best, is the music itself, the music which is played in the background? Meanwhile all elements of the world of pictures are concrete, the music is the only tool that can raise you or pull you down into the objective reality. It works that way here too and creates the environment of a real costume film. (It is disturbing, but many times the slanting columns, the arc of the slide up, and sometimes the lights too show expressionist visions for us, and they refer to the approaching, overwhelming changing, to the real tempest: to the revolution.)

Then why are we in this place? Why do we have to get into – that way, unauthorized, in a spying way – wings of Hollywood to follow until the end this typical story of the XIX. century? Why do we need the mediation, the middle world of film and opera to get drawn the Ostrovsky-like fable about degradation of being?

Exactly for the reason why Balázs always gives a separate highlighted role for his viewer: always with different tools but the director always gives us a weird, outside, almost divine optic – it is similar to the table layer god-like waiter of Empedocles (Balázs Dévai), or the angel-like figure (Hermina Fátyol) who is hanging from above in The Blacks – I do not want to go on with it.

We face up with the same gesture in The Tempest too: the light masters with their whole presence with beams of their intelligent lamps on carriages put the actions into analytical lighting, almost Brecht-like quotation marks; The feeling of peeping in a film studio brings distance between us and the world of performance. Even more important from it that eyes of film can work in another way too, if the viewers are able to do an imagined movement to put their own eyes on the place of the close eyes of the camera, and able to see the picture of a future film in front of them at the same time – we can visualise really intimate premier plans and big totals which show over our realistic point of view, we can go closer or further from that point where we really watch the performance. This ghost like activity is offered for the viewers, the chosen stories or their sets, the solutions can change, anyway it seems to be the greatest characteristic of Balázs’ performances.

Ostrovsky creates the colourful veil of relationships to be able to tell vividly Katya’s story, the woman’s who escapes from an unhappy marriage to a secret relationship, then gets disappointed from it too and escapes to death. In the inner circle of the matrix of the roles there are the strict mother, her son (Katya’s husband) who depends on her, and cannot grow up, and the sibling of the husband (Katya’s ally), Varvara, opposite to her there is the lover Boris and his uncle, Dikov stands, with whom Kabanova has a secret relationship. The background characters have to show us the state of Russia which is going towards an explosion through the society of the town. While the pilgrim woman, Feklusha is the typical fanatic of the era, a woman Rasputin, Kuligin is the dreamer idealist, who megaphones of the technical and social progress.

Balázs strengthens the tragic-comedian and ironic – grotesque sounds of the play instead of the dark moody adaptation of a fate-tragedy like play as it has been treated so far. It can be seen the most in case of Kabanova, who is performed by Olga Varjú. The great woman with the actress’ performance is much closer to Arkadina in spite of her strictness than to Bernarda: the Kabanov garden is not a closed world on the level of sets and costumes, the terror of souls is much more cunning, as the keys are in the soul. The ermine fur in neck refers well to the fact that the constant training of her son and sister-in-law is not a rule of life but an evil perversion. Her relationship with Dikov is not moved by real desires, but the pure sexism; the actress is rigid like a statue when she dresses down to the love scene, and she does not leave the animal fur even at the moment. At the same time, it is ironically funny when she asks her son (in connection with her sister-in-law) in a fake naïve way: “If she is not afraid of you, how can she be from your mother?” Her lover, Dikov, who is made the same statue-like rigid version of himself by Róber Kardos, in an almost grotesque way, for a long time, with a weird smile stands in a pose at one of the arcades, then when he speaks in a stuttering way, he almost collapses as he is so drunken. Balázs Dévai speaks sensitively and chiselled in the role of the husband, his hesitant rebels are unsuccessful trials, they fall down like tepid waves. That scene is wonderful where the wife, who has already been afraid of the cheating, asks him not to travel: they finally come together in harmony, in a kiss, but the mother’s entrance ruins everything. Her son would step to her to say goodbye with a hug, but his mother forces him on knees, makes him a slave; he is made to kiss the edge of her skirt. Finally as the peak point of all evilness she forces without any intimacy, her son and daughter-in-law to kiss each other in public in an unhappy way. Dévai slows down endlessly the scene, but anyway he does everything. After the death of his wife he becomes really retarded, we can see him as a child: he is hanging from Kuligin’s shoulder as a heavy bag, and his figure articulates word by word his hopeless final message.

This kind of stylisation appears other places too, I have to tell it that this time Balázs does not make the actors do any exotic movements. The stylisation that remains in the performance indicates anyway the individual appearance of the characters, or the usage of the place require from the actors. It is important that no one can remain alone with their roles, the indiscretion of the eyes of films follow everybody, examine everybody from close, and judge them. The actors are moving between flashing lights, sometimes they turn directly towards the imagined camera or the source of light which watches their gestures. The most moving moment is when Kátya Tompos, who plays Katya’s role cannot remain alone even during the final moment. In contrary to the text she does not jump, but she slowly climbs down into the fatal river: she simply climbs down from the tallest point of the right side on metal hooks which are placed there, and she remains there attached to the side wall. In contrast to the others’ lively death as they are stuck into their characters she chooses the real one, meanwhile she is singing a wonderful Russian folk song on her mother tongue, as the only melody of the performance, and turns backward the film-like virtual reality.

In Renaissance iconography the swan is one of the important symbols of death. Kátya Tompos is a similar swan: her whole performance, her secret ballerina-like figure, her gaze away indicate that – as she lives through the situations of social connections in this non-worldly way, as she is lost in herself, in a meditated way, with her husband, with family (Kamilla Fátyol plastic formation to Varvara’ accomplice is a vivid loosening, but not a solution), and then leaves them with the help of the illusion of love, then to find her way to home in a song, on the invisible bank of rivers. It is strange as I can see her on the ladder, motionless, and I know that she is dead, anyway she is much more vivid than the others, the living real dead people, with their own meaningless recognitions; nothing has changed anyway, for the revolution they need a half century which is full of sufferings, they need another generation.

It can explain for me why do we miss the “title role”, why does not Balázs show us the – of course, basically symbolic – phenomenon (however we can see the lights of reflectors as long lights of lighting). To be more punctual: he shows it, but not the tempest, but the tense silence before it; with the role of Kuligin and Feklusha. The actors, who play these roles Artúr Kálid and Éva Bakos (Even Ádám Tompa, who in the role of Kudriash shows us a perfect ballet scene) present a much more dynamic, acting style of performance, than their partners who are stiffened in their static characters, motionless state of life, Artúr Kálid is the only one, who at least points out the fact: a person died. He will be the one, who gets Kátya Tompos down from the highness of the side wall, and lays the dead woman provocatively into the middle of the place. As he is carrying the couple, the vivid but childish Tihon and the dead Katya, he may feel that at least he gets the sin on himself, which he has not even done, and the fate from which he cannot get out: as an adult he realises his own situation. He show the Leonardo album at the beginning, the mentioning of the invention of the lighting rod is about the possibility of a more enlightened world in the pitch-darkness of mentality. Éva Bakos in the role of Feklusha is strange and wild, she forms a disturbing figure: she makes me remember not an old woman but a naughty child, as she is appearing from time to time from the hidden places of arcades: as she is running through the stage, as she is the frightening lighting herself, with which the lighting rod of clear sense could fight evidently. Her ominous sentences become real frightening because of these double meaning: in her ideas, on the opposite pole with Kuligin, the darkest tradition of the Russian past, the mysticism which is full of nihilism to confirm herself with Katya’s death: as I feel it, in the strongest performance of the actress a superstitious Puck mixes her invisible, but even more life-threatening lines. Zalán Makranczi, who plays Boris is rigid and rough unfortunately in a civil way, so he cannot give enough power to Boris. His feelings towards Katya seem to be clean, and his performance does not make clear when he has changed and escaped from the love. Hermina Fátyol as a servant is an empty bowl: her mistress always treats her as an object in a feudal way, she is a cloth doll when her mistress dresses down for love, she puts on her with malicious cruelty the regal clothes, the other times she rolls out of a cloth to make it possible for the Kabanovs to benefit from the clothes which have been made of her own “body” (understand that way: it is gained from her and her mates’ tormenting work).

Gábor Pap, Ellenfény, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

In The Tempest, which has been performed in Bárka Theatre there are many things – hardly everything – which we need to not only understand but feel the magnificence, the elevated tragedy of the drama which is actual even today. Zoltán Balázs puts Janácek’s opera, Katya Kabanova into Ostrovsky’s drama; Judit Gombár designed the set for this later one, which is similar to a ramp to a motorway which leads to nowhere. There are holes under it, which make the fast movement possible – the mysterious background curtain which indicates the infinite landscape and the colourful – effective lighting strengthen or counterpoint the waving passions of the performance. The staff who is moved on the rails serves the same play, whose aim is to indicate remarkably the work of reflectors – the formation of the so-called effects.

So, the passions are waving, furthermore by the fault lines of the drama – and the artistic beauty, the directorial imagination try to emphasise it. He shows us and emphasises that Katerina who lives in the tyrant mother-in-law’s monumental dictatorship, thanks to an electric shock like glance she falls in love with Tihon – of course, Kátya Tompos and Zalán Makranczi quote the classical situation of Romeo and Juliette, so that make even stronger the different continuation - ; this passion is more complex than a frantic love, as everything is in it, which has been denied from Katerina: the choice, the freedom, the self-expression, the self-failure. That is why it is not a problem that Tihon by Makranczi returns Kátya Tompos’ deep, more complex flare-up with surface, superficial tools.

From Zoltán Balázs’ direction we do not miss the representations of fate, at least in case of the main characters, but their theatrical formal language is always there in the foreground. Kabanova, who is really powerful – Olga Varjú plays beautifully not only the tyrant mother and mother -in-law, but the woman too who lives a colourful sensual life – her ceremonial dressing on the slowly moving camera car or Éva Bakos, who as Feklusha plays a prophet – clown with broken outlook and exalted soul, they are all so called exclamation marks in the director and actor’s form-language: “Here The Tempest storms!”

The well-formed pictures rhyme many times with the interpretation: Tihon is the runner, but his long, surprising kiss with Katerina’s sister-in-law, with Varvara reflects a sharp strand not only on the man’s character (it is the gesture language of the surface communication not of the disloyalty or cheating), but on the girl too, who has strong erotic experience with someone else. A passionate kiss: it can be nothing and everything. For Katerina it is everything. Kátya Tompos’ suicide is a beautiful stylization, it is heart-breaking anyway: she is sitting in a ball-shape in the middle of the stage.

The side characters bring one-one feature; maybe Artúr Kálid is an exception, who associates a mythical and silly Kuligin with his composed outlook. Balázs Dévai’s Kabanov works not with his weakness but with his reflected acceptance; he tolerates his mother’s tyranny, anyway he knows many things, and he votes to the peace of soul which alcohol can give to him.

The other performance of The Tempest was directed by Viktor Rizsakov with the troupe of the new members from Debrecen and Beregszász – from almost nothing he created an endless wealth. There is not any set – in front of the stage, which is surrounded by white walls, there is low water, there are some doors on the walls and a real door has been made there from another set (with the writing on it: “this is the life of Gypsies”). There is stylization too, the director and the actors’ inner fight for freedom is in connection with the not even smaller bet of theatre making. A wondering troupe arrives with their worn luggage – the luggage will give later possibility for different kind of acrobatic and artistic tricks -, they play the drama and their own fate at the same time. Some costumes have separate “dialogue” with their stressed worn civil clothes, they come in and out between their actor and role life, they speak out, they comment on, they play. They put tragedy into commedia dell'arte, sometimes they help themselves and each other over hard times with farce like drives. There are some “objective” ones between them: the performance of the group is uneven. So many of them are involved in the tragic ending of the youngster’s love; they stress that the young – and really immature – Katya (Eszter Anna Szabó) needs help for her own death too: Boris, her love whispers her what to tell. There are many divine moments, perfect solutions, deep scenes – Tihon is an overgrown child there, who as his mother’s little child accepts to wash him, dry him, cut his nails. Nelli Szűcs’ Kabanova grows above everybody, it is all right: an everyday tyrant, she can rule and destroy with one glance, she does not need the divas’ attributes, not even an emphasized moment, not a composed situation, as herself is enough for monumentality. Zsolt Trill plays Kuligin the dreamer – inventor, he is a great clown. Rizsakov leads the players with ordered extravagance towards the shocking final – and of course, it is thought well too – they are standing in front of us, we are looking at each other, and a stray toy bear is given from hand to hand.

(Zsámbék, 31st Augustus, Bárka, 9th September)

Judit Csáki, Magyar Narancs, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Maybe The Tempest is one of Ostrovsky’s most sophisticated and detailed work. The opera, Katya Kabanova, which is Leoš Janáček’s, less well-known work in Hungary (It has not been played for decades) but otherwise it is his best one. That Zoltán Balázs hardly put the two works together in Bárka Theatre is more than a coincidence.

Moreover. The Tempest seems to be a prosaic print to the opera, as the director composes some scenes especially to the musical version. The musical work is much darker, it has ghostly atmosphere, so the coproduction of Maladype and Bárka Theatre tries to reach it too: the actions, which are lightened in an unusual way by head machines which are moving in front of the viewers on rails, happen in front of gloomy, painted storm clouds, on a cliff – in which there are regular slits, similar to tombs of cliff, are hidden. In the centre of Janáček’s opera we cannot find the traditional cliché of love triangle, but the relationship which is between the husband’s mother and the husband or the wife. Zoltán Balázs’ direction emphasises it: for Marfa Ignatievna’s confused identity Feklusha, the pilgrim woman, who is treated clearly mad, keeps a mirror. The drama forms a clean and punctual picture, where with the leading role Kátya Tompos debuts in Bárka Theatre. Here we can see for the first time Zalán Makranczi too, who has been tempted lately from Kecskemét.

Orsi Kónya, szinhaz.hu, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

I would not like to tell a hasty judgment, but while I was reading Acropolis by Wyspianski – and after it even more – I had the feeling that about this monumental drama cannot be said the phrase that „it is crying for a stage”: this drama has to be found. It is a really hard text – I could get the text which has not appeared earlier in Hungarian with Vince Hajba’s beautiful, old styled, mostly untheatrical translation, which for second reading thanks for the more accurate understanding can show us its „deeper” meanings too.

The lines like “...Swirling in a scented way, covers me in the dark / results of retaining walls of devil mist”, or “...the arms of smoke climbing onto the dark peak, / darkness of night swirling around legs of rocks, / up until the night get into full powers”, they are purely wonderful, reading them and especially rereading them can give high aesthetics pleasure. But you must be an experienced viewer on your foot – or instead (with some confusion): on your ears – who can accept and understand the meaning of the sentences which are sounding from the stage for the first hearing. And of course, further beautiful wonders are waiting for somebody who has been trained to be the expert of the genius drama writer, restorer of churches, and painter who lived at the turn of the XIX-XX. century. Unfortunately, the human life – as we can learn it also from Acropolis – is limited, so from most of the theatre goers we cannot expect to come to theatre with earlier studies. Sadly, I would risk to tell that this kind of high levelled preparedness cannot be required from critics who are professional theatre goers. However, Acropolis is a real drama of book, it is divided into four parts, it is monumental, it is an apocalyptic vision, it is a culture and religious historical overview which is over eras and genres. If we watch it as a moral tale of human history and if we would like to compare it with The tragedy of man, than from the point of view of genre differences can be sentenced that if Madách’s work is an outworked topic of a final exam then Wyspianski’s is a complete academic doctoral thesis.

The first scene of Acropolis is the only one which does not have any literary background which is accurately entitled and named: the second scene – the scene of Troy – gets its idea from Iliad by Homer, the third one – Jacob’s story – from the biblical Old Testament, while the fourth one – King David’s monologue – from the book of Psalms. This whole culture historical picture book is put in frame by the cathedral of Krakow which is evoked in the first and forth scene, the Wawel, which is a mental summary of all scenes, sometimes identifiable, sometimes playfully and/or the gloomily covered common location of a lifelike story and the focus of the beginning and the destruction of the world which ends everything.

The Maladype Theatre with Zoltán Balázs’ leading has been going on their own road since 2002 that is impossible to compare to any other theatrical formation, and they have performed so defining and significant performances as Blood Wedding, School for Fools, Theomachia, The Blacks or Empedocles. There are many who decline their art, those reluctant people who feel and measure their simplified movements, the interpreting musical dictions which are mostly composed on opera like statements, but mostly the overpowered visual experiences and their style which is built on pictures that are overworked into the smallest pieces and call them elitist affectation or monotonous deterrence of the viewers. On the other side there are the obsessed believers – according to the writer’s of this critic own experiences – whose group is growing, who are fond of this unique form language, the rare approach towards the viewers’ and theatre makers’ side in Hungary, where the immersion and the intensive listening are required form both sides of presence, from the performers and viewers too.

According to the ideas above it is even surprising that Sándor Zsótér and Zoltán Balázs have not found each other earlier. Meanwhile the “cooperative” direction is a brave experiment: the first two scenes are directed by Zsótér, the second ones are done by Balázs. It all depends on the fact if the two directors’, who are working with really strong worlds of images and visions of analysation and performance of text, common points of thinking about theatre can come together to form a unified performance which can give us all night long valid experience. After that I have seen the result I have to say yes and no. Who can get into the mood of Zsótér’s from the beginning – and his constant partners’: Mária Ambrus, set, Mari Benedek, costume and Júlia Ungár, dramaturg – distinctive on its own but together too, always high levelled work (as it has happened with the writer of these lines) those can enjoy not only the harmony of picture and text, and can understand and enjoy the beauty of the stories which are conjured in front of us, but in connection with Zsótér’s earlier works, we can say that they can free up their humour too. I have never laughed so much on any other performances by Zsótér (however Penthesileia in the National Theatre or earlier in the Kamra Theatre, Csongor and Tünde made me laugh strangely many times).

The monumental cemetery like solemnity of the Cathedral of Krakow, which is kept in grey is made embarrassingly grotesque by the junks and exhibition of small nothings. We are moving in a maze surrounded by flashing plastic hearts, where the lovers who find each other sometimes use the seats of the church as school benches or kneelers. In the scene of Troy everybody, who seemingly are on a holiday on an island of the South Sea and who are just from the beach live through some episodes of a story of a sweet soap-opera: it is really tasteless, Hecuba, Priam, Hector, Helene and the others tell the beautiful lines which are rewritten according to Homer while they are rolled in vivid coloured (with lions and palms) beach towels. In both scenes, there is the lift, which roughly, uncomfortably divides the place, which goes somewhere upstairs – obviously into the world of gods – or takes down characters from there, who sometimes use the roughly noisy machine as a food lift or a crane truck of constructions.

The second part (the third and the forth scenes) is Zoltán Balázs’ work, and I have to emphasize that the refers to the continuation of the previous stories are obvious. The connection of couples, the continuation of men-women duets, the rhyme of the characters. For example, Artúr Kálid previously as Tempus and Priam, is now Isaak the obviously wise-powerful man, the old one who has the most experiences of the world; Nóra Parti is earlier the girl from the tomb, then Helene – her partner in both cases is Ádám Tompa -, in Balázs’ part they play Laban’s wife. I can continue the characters’ interpretations that are working all through the performance. The aim is obvious: the two parts are not built according to two totally different conceptions, but they are shades, approaches inside the similar (theatrical) view of world to form one, unified performance. Balázs also in his earlier works has tried to make musical the visions of stage and Wyspianski’s drama is a perfect material for it, which the director treats – as it is written in the programme – not as a drama but as an opera without music. This emphasized musicality (in King David’s monologue) becomes clear reality in the fourth scene, when Szabolcs Hámori performs László Sáry’s opera, he forms it into a wonderful vision of stage: he is standing in the middle of a huge veil which is coming from above and surrounding him from waist and emphasized vulnerability of his bare upper body, around him there are black figures – the characters of the earlier, biblical Isaak’s story – who rhythm and follow him on hand drums, they hail the performance with their devoted attention, without any words.

Besides the similarities of the directors’ conceptions it would be useful if we thought about their differences too, here I would emphasize one point: Balázs’ direction is lack of humour. After the performance I thought a lot, that why did I feel lighter, and what is more important: easier to accept that part which was directed by Zsótér. Then I realised, from those parts which were directed by Balázs, the visions of stage, the turns of Isaac’s story, the lyrical and tragic characteristics of relationships of siblings and lovers, the visions of beautiful bodies, the beauties of Sáry’s opera and Szabolcs Hámori’s performance and the others’ disciplined team work would remain with me for sure, but I never smiled – mostly because there was nothing which could make me smile. Of course, it is not for sure that it is a mistake (however according to my strong belief a really good tragedy cannot be imagined without any humour and it is true the other way around), but obviously it is not easy to follow with the same interest level the second part of the three hours long performance, which is performed on the same heavy, ceremonial style.

The performance is a very important stage on the road of Maladype to become a troupe, especially from the point of view of the same professional level, where the actors have been trying to rise up. Of course, still not everybody can stand in for those requirements, which this intensive and high-levelled director’s work means. Nóra Parti and Éva Bakos know evidently all, which they should in Zsótér and Balázs’ theatre: their performances are characterised by perfect speaking, moving, mimics and concentration all through the performance; they should be the standard. The others have waving performance, Balázs Dévai, Artúr Kálid, Kamilla Fátyol and Ádám Tompa have the most of beautiful moments.

This try, to perform Whypianski by Maladype, can be called brave or even bold. They have tried to connect genres and styles, to show them next to each other and to harmonise them.

Opera, Bible, the epic heroic poem and the tale form a real, exciting theatrical multidisciplinarity. This trial is risky too, but I am sure that it is worth it. This approach, that treat the viewers as partners and co-operators, is very important, from which we would need more to our theatrical life today.

György Karsai, Színház, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Acropolis by Wypianski surpasses the three unites by Aristotle: the permanent place (we are in the great church of the castle of Wawel in Krakow) does not fix the time, action and characters who can jump from scene to scene that way.

The play has, besides its concrete time schedule (the actions take place on once passed Holi Saturday night between midnight and four o’clock) a mythical time too, outside history, which can give us an infinite experience, meanwhile (according to the writer’s instructions) we do not move outside the huge walls of the cathedral. It is really shocking, when the characters step out and speak out from their place (but not from their time) and they refer to the “real” place, to the bells of churches of Krakow, and to the River Vistula which is flowing by the hills of the castle. But what else can they do in this confused time and place: according to the writer’s imagination the animated art works – angels, antique gods formed to tombs or anonym sculptures start the line, then give the timeless (world)stage of the church to the characters of Troy from Iliad, then to biblical figures.

After the chain reaction of the first scene which is led by the angels, from the second one those characters appear on stage who are wearing the mark of chosenness on themselves: Hector, the escaping Jacob who has cheated his brother and father, finally King David go to the last battle. It is hard to find any other rational parallel between the scenes, but it is not impossible: all the vectors of the symbolic and esoteric refers, which are hidden in the text, point at Christ, between all possible Christs, at the lamb of the Book of Revelation, who “will open the Book”. The ghost story, which has been exiled into objective memories, can come into life like a magic in Wyspianski’s drama which is intentionally thick as an opera. The real main hero is the soul there who can fill the art works with life, as Hector who goes to the final battle tells it too in the second scene (Priam: “What makes you do it? / What a cursed idea you have?” Hector: “The soul...”)

Those who put this play on stage – after finding order between the writer’s creeping metaphor – have to find this wondering, prophet-like “soul” to be able to open the original depth of the drama. From now on I have to talk about two solutions, so about two performances: Sándor Zsótér, as we have got used to it, does not use any illustrations, and with pure tools creates “present tense” context with the actors of Maladype in the Fencing Hall of Bárka Theatre, the leader of the troupe, Zoltán Balázs offers a theatre of ceremony without any quotation marks. This later one is much closer to Wyspianski’s characteristic Slavonic ecstasy.

Zsótér extends the unsolvable duality of time with a third one: he shows the de-heroic and dishonoured half past during the first two scenes. Mária Ambrus composed into the middle of the Fencing Hall a stage around which there are seats. Besides the sculptures of tombs and the benches, which are placed towards the transparent altar, nothing is what it seems to be: the plans of the main walls are given by foldout books for children, while the walls of the crypt are drawn into the place by telephone books. A robust goods lift imitates the tower of church in the middle, which is the only “way” into the upside area, for example the first angel arrives with it to start the scale of resurrections – most of the performers are on different points of the place at the beginning. (The only rhyme between the two half parts can be the fact that Judit Gombár, who is Zoltán Balázs’ set designer, lets down from there the orange baldachin curtain of the second part.) The characters will disappear in the end, through the stairs going down from the place of the altar. Tempus, The Time leaves much earlier, who as there is not any gate, opens road to himself through the walls, so through the children books: in an interesting way from outside to inside, then downstairs. At the possibility of present would leak away together with him through the subtle walls from the stage: the other elements of the objective world, the electronic lightening artificial candles, the artificial flowers express the air of a passed trendy world which has already been forgotten, as well as the quotation of the bittersweet nostalgic song is, “The time stops”. Another blasphemous sign of time(less)ness is the old coffeemaker which splashes in slurping way when waking up is mentioned.

The characters as they are connected to more sculptures play literally souls, the bodies are doubled, we can see an irregular puppet theatre, where the mover leaves the moved one (his own original body) on its own, which is handled by another actor after it. (I need a long time to understand how I should watch this strange situation: Should I follow the actor or the sculpture, to whom and where I should connect the voice?) It is powerful anyway when sometimes the soul turns directly to its partner: “Who are you?” – asks one from the another once. It is a nice idea, that the sculptures are sometimes torsos, one of them has not got a head (Amor’s who belongs to Zoltán Oláh), other one has not got body (Artúr Kálid as Tempus), these are completed, filled with life by the actors – souls who belong to them later. In case of the allegorical figure who is played by Artúr Kálid, the head of the sculpture as it is held in his hands can be seen as a refer to Hamlet, to the unsettling time.

Zsótér’s thought is interpreted the strongest way by the dialogue between Clio (Éva Bakos) and the Girl (Nóra Parti): the muse of the story writing can get free in the hardest way from the real captivity of the words, while the others are having sex by the tombs. Anyway, we are captives of our books, objects, melodies and our nostalgia, we cannot even get closer to our own soul, not to the other people’s. The only possible way if we break through the wall, which the human means in his rational sense: in the final scene the Girl is knocking on the gallant’s scull, “are you still at home, or have left”, then similarly to the others, she invites the boy for a love act.

The girl and the boy’s scene ending happiness is questioned a lot, when the same actors (Ádám Tompa and Nóra Parti) come back as Paris and Helene in the second scene: Zsóter shows a relationship which is over its peak point a lot: the unhappy and “burnt out” couple, who were the causes of the war of Troy, are standing in front of us. Once Nóra Parti gets the plug of the electric artificial flower in her mouth, but of course, no light can flash up. This degraded state forms the base of the main line of the scene: Hector (Balázs Dévai) against all rational reasons (Achilles would give up this fight with him), forces the battle himself, in which he will die, and at that moment in the area of the catholic church the future begins: Hector and Priam’s good bye scene, the relation between the father and son, can be the prototype of the consciously accepted sacrifice, it can show us Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. However, the composition of the area, the hero who is turning towards the altar behind him with the father who is saying goodbye from the highness of the lift, can be beautiful reference, Zsóter’ picture of soul remains artificial creature till the end, it is distilled product of laboratory, it cannot grab me for a moment. I think that this approach of direction is incompatible with Wyspianski’s sensual and ecstatic language.

In contrast with it, Zoltán Balázs has recognised the strange graceful logic of the play, the power, which neglects mostly the individuals’ acts, which the state of being chosen means. Jacob’s story, which comes to life from the Flemish wall tapestry, does not have any moral lessons, maybe one, that the chosen one can do hardly anything and hardly anything can be done with him: Jacob’s mother, after Rebeca’s urging, cheats her father and brother, gets the first born one’s privileges and the blessing with it, but then while she is escaping from her brother’s anger in Laban’s house, during her own wedding night, she becomes the victim of a conspiracy – her lover, under the covering of veil, makes love with the elder sister, Leah, instead of Rachel. The sins are not followed by punishment, during the closure of the scene, Esau’s anger does not end in reckoning, but in forgiveness which cleans Cain’s sin too. The edge of the rational mind becomes blunt because of The Almighty’s mercy: Jehovah orders the heroes of the story by dreams. The most important one is the vision, which the hero has by Betel, which according to Wyspianski is a real initiation to death. (Angels: “You get into life in flames. / You die during the day / You are walking in the shining float. / An axe hits your head. / Your death comes for you. / Come, get into life again, / Much power can help you.”)

Judit Gombár “dresses up” just the depth and the high of the place: upside on the place of the imaginary tower of church there is an orange cloth, it is strange, opened – in the middle there is a transparent point – and it gives a tent roof to the house, for which the laid multilayer carpets on the floor of the Fencing Hall, forms the world itself. The figures come down from this cloth not from the wall, anyway the Gothic stretchy dresses and their snake-like long sleeves are connected to it, as they are moving, swimming through the place: the drawing of the carpet forms the walls of a giant square, and along the diagonals between the tops. (The actors’ needs and intentions – as we have got used to it in case of other performances of Maladype – instead of the natural appearance, can be manifested on these roads with defined aim.) The cloth, which is a baldachin too, that covers the centre as well, forms an aura around the dreams that reflect the divine meanings of the actions, around the light bed of fights and loves, where sky and earth can become one in a mysterious amor sanctus. Meanwhile the important actions are in the intersection of the diagonals, under the baldachin, the divine light can select perfectly, and it spreads only in the emphasised moments, as it puts is transcendent third dimension to the plain shady world of the play that is happening on the carpet. Sometimes this light reaches the viewers too: they fire the candles which have been put to our chairs during the break, at the beginning of the ladder-scene, and the actors blow them away only after a long time, after the meeting of Rachel and the hero. (The flames appear again during the closure, but then they are the only light source of the place, as they coming down on a ball-shaped candlestick. Back, Matthew Passion is connected to it all which is played in. The performers must use it as a reference to The Almighty who arrives into the life on the Earth.)

The scale of scenes which is together with the ritual extension of light can make clear, that the condition of getting into the state of grace, into the divine situation – it is the whole self-revelation. That is why that during the ecstasy of the ladder scene Zoltán Balázs makes first Jacob (Kristóf Horváth) naked, then Rachel (Kamilla Fátyol) then later the Angel (Ádám Tompa), that is why actors roll up the carpets on the middle of the place of Earth, and then the whole troupe get dressed for this ceremonial state at the end of the scene – that way with the taking of any pieces, they emphasize the closed clothes that have covered their whole bodies, backward. According to the director’s interpretation sometimes even the elevated stylization of the play gets pure: Jacob has sex with Rachel in reality, the Angle really fights with him, so the performance can show up a higher, divine reality with the help of these real islands of actions that are put between symbolic actions. (The level of stylization is shown there by the original text and the situation itself: the fountain of Bethel, where Jacob has seen a dream can be identified with Rachel, and the Angel can rise the whole situation with the help of his higher status.) The peak point of the whole performance is Jacob’s ecstatic dance, who is turning around as a dervish while having bath in the lights of Apollo and Jehovah, which – as we can see it – will become the only long action of the fourth scene.

The director gives up all theatrical tools to give the clean stage to the only character of the last scene, to King David – after all to the exceptionally strong music, which was composed by László Sáry. Under the extreme shot, which is similar to a light of work, the members of the troupe sit around Szabolcs Hámori, who sings the role of the king, and to his scene long singing solo – with Kornél Mogyoró’s help – they give the sing and drum company. (Here the instruments, which were carried as jugs during the earlier scene get their real function.) As the bass singer’s upper body is naked at the beginning indicates that he stands clean in front of his God. Before he can start, the cloth from the sky comes down and the earlier baldachin surrounds his waist as a skirt. David is over his own story, he shares with us the inner ideas and doubts of the hour of death. His memories, which recons everything at the last, frozen moment of sense, which reflects his own story, now play again the movie of his life, while the final question as a refrain comes back again and again: “who am I?”. In the only action which is happening on the stage we can see Jacob’s dervish dance, but it is slowed down: the singer is turning around during his monologue, and the cloth, the corners of which are held by the actors, is gradually twisting on his body.

The actors not only with unbelievable humility but for me with unknown deep concentration make plastic the strict palace of rhythm of the composer, and to tell the truth, this team work, the visible feelers of the attention of the performers towards the soloist, can amaze me the most during the long time of the performance, which the troupe works along with unbelievable flow.

Next to actors, László Sáry’s well sing-able, archaic and modern phrases can form an arc during the performance, which becomes really elevated thanks for the drama per musica of the last scene. It is not by accident that I try to avoid the expression of “aria”: the melodies are more similar to Baroque monody than to authentic Hebrew cantillations, which emphasized the importance of the understanding of text during the heroic age of operas – melisma can give much sensitivity to dictions. That way King David’s passionate and personal song can become the shocking counterpart of the performers’ disciplined drum playing during Szabolcs Hámori’s inspired performance. The sounding cantus firmus of the canon of the choir intonates a coral from Matthew Passion, in that way from the Baroque heroic time of the Old Testament we get to the Saviour of the New Testament, musically too – the virtual closure of the performance also fulfils this process.

I can remember only an example from films if I want to find that eternal slowness, into which Zoltán Balázs and László Sáry’s theatre and music invite their viewers during the last scene – in Stalker by Tarkovsky the nearby pictures of the heroes’ face can evoke this pace. Obviously, the performance loses many of its viewers, but I hope, that those who it can win, will stay till the end along that narrow road on which the enchanted soul leads us – into the innermost room.

Gábor Pap, Criticai Lapok, 2006

(translated by : Veronika Fülöp)

It is easy for the Polish. They go every Sunday to the holy mass and understand the metaphors of liturgy. It is easy for viewers who can watch in the theatre a performance where there is background, there is conflict, there is development and everything, which they have got used to. It is easy to write about a writer who we know well, whose writings and plays can be touched. Well not! It will not be easy! – it is said in the Bárka Theatre and they perform Wyspianski’s play, Acropolis.

The European Book Publisher in 1989 published the writer’s plays with György Spiró’s translation (Acropolis was not there; it was translated by Vince Hajba). Except The November Night (Szolnok, Szigligeti Theatre, 1994 – Sándor Zsótér’s direction) the Hungarian theatre life has tried to avoid the writer up until now. As we do not have any other sources, everybody must quote Spiró. We can read details in the programme, in the news from his epilogue which he wrote to the book. It would not be a problem, as Spiró’s appreciation is clever, wise, punctual, as I can judge it without any Polish knowledge with my pure empathy, the translation must be excellent. The phenomenon can tell that we do not know anything about Wyspianski. He wanted to be an artist, with aims of Gesammtkunst. On his pastel painting, titled Straw Man we can see rose bushes surrounded by straw, with which we can meet in the Wedding too. His visions are always picturesque, more punctually statue-like. He wanted to write an opera, an opera without music.

„...this romantic idea is full of debris of once existed myths” – Spiró wrote it in connection with the play, Legion in the epilogue of the book. The debris of the myth. The Acropolis cannot be described more punctually or more beautifully than this. Four scenes: Sándor Zsótér directed the first two, Zoltán Balázs did the third and the forth.

The viewers are sitting around the orchestra. There is a line of chairs in a circle next to the walls. There is a lift in the middle of the place. On the ground there are roofs of crypts marked by telephone books, the stage is surrounded by pictured foldouts.

In the first scene the castle of Krakow, the statues of Wawel and its carpets get into life for a night, they have that time for life and love. Plaster cast statues are standing, crouching and laying everywhere. Some of them are from the night class by Huber Dési, others may have come from the college to play here. In this theatre there is not real life, there are not personalities, there are not actions, as it is about dead ones all of it can be obvious. Anyway the statues are playing. They are hugged, a voice is speaking in their names too. Maybe the aim comes from Grotowski: – he directed Acropolis himself too – searching for the gesture, which is true, and unusual at the same time: Éva Bakos reaches into a man torso which has lost its head. As she cannot do anything else...

The figures who are waiting on their knees indicate that they are all in the church, where the altar is the stage. It is not for sure of course. We can say that it is one possible result of the viewers’ freedom of interpretation. The beginning of the second scene does not come obviously after the end of the first one. The war of Troy, love and heroism. I think that in this system of signs the voice is the tool of communication, not the speaking, but it would be good to understand it, because I think that the text must be important too, otherwise they would not speak in poems. The actors of Maladype Theatre play with fantastic discipline and devotion, as we have got used to it from them. The hall is very big.

During the interval the viewers have to leave the auditorium – for some of them it is a final solution – then those who return will find a candle on their chairs. It is not hard to understand: one of the actors gives fire, with the help of these small flames everybody is connected to each other and to the performance.

Jacob’s story is coming. The sight is beautiful. In the middle there is a huge, orange flower, sun or anything, which will become a tent then David’s dress. The characters’ dresses are similar to the clothes of dervishes. The long sleeves of the dresses can stroke, hug even when its owner has gone on, just left their sleeves on their partners’ shoulder. The characters are moving in geometrical shapes, their movements are slow, their words are mostly direct quotes from the Bible. Mostly. At the end of the story, Jacob gives to Esau together with his presents the defeated angel too, and Esau forgives him.

The forth part is not separated sharply from the previous one. There is not much music so far, only in quotation marks. Here suddenly everything becomes music, song, pray, rhythm. With Szabolcs Hámori’s performance we can listen to King David’s psalms. The whole scene is just one monologue, with László Sáry’s music. Meanwhile the singer is turning around slowly and rolling up on himself his orange-sun-like dress to make total theatre with one performer. The others are playing the drums with Kornél Mogyoró’s leading and performing the choir. Here are two directors and two different worlds.

The first with its leanness, the second one with its picturesque visons strengthen his words. What is similar in them? Maybe that both of them turn away of the profaned naturalist theatre, and Wyspianski’s play is a great reason for it, which tries to find the possible solution in the myth and rites. There is not any solution of course. Nothing has finished, nothing is finished, everything will start again, even if Wawel collapses meanwhile and “theatre buries the viewers under itself”.

Margit Balla, AmaroDrom, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

(Wyspianski: Acropolis; Ferenc Molnár: Liliom – Bárka Theatre)

Macbeth does not kill the dream; the hurry kills the theatre.

I cannot accept that the viewers who have paid for it, became the objects of an experiment. After the premier they changed the auditorium because we could not see well. Or the performance, to make it half an hour or even more shorter. The performance is not ready, the director fixes it every day – the viewers could see something different on Friday than on Thursday (it is not Péter Halász-like theatre which is up to date). The earlier ones are concrete examples from the past weeks. The director is lucky if he can experiment during the summer games the autumn premiere (maybe the summer viewers are unlucky), if they can realise that something has happened between the one in summer and autumn in the world or in the country.

Who makes permanent theatre, prepares for it for a long time, and shows it when it is ready. Well-known directors around the world spend months or more than a year to work out continuously their ideas before they start the rehearsals. Then they have rehearsals until they reach the optimum. In case of throwaway theatre, we do not need it. The throwaway theatre is similar to the invalid theatre tickets. It is invalid. Every night is a gig. Many times monthly or for years.

Theatrical people’s minimal politeness is to create the minimal conditions for watching it. For example they employ actors whose words can be understood. They organise the stage and auditorium that way that they can be heard. They analyse the effects of what they have done, and ask that the audience can get their aim, is there a possibility of communication. I sympathize with old theatre lovers, who left the Bárka Theatre during the interval of Acropolis, as he was sitting at the end of the huge barn-like hall and could not understand anything from the text. I was sitting in the middle and that way I did not understand only the two third of it. Partly because of the bad acoustic and partly because of the actors’ bad speaking. From actors without energy and with bad articulation, who are suffering from the lack of personality, a four hour long poetic text cannot be beard. Not even three of them (if they have shortened it since the premier). The inner working of the Maladype Theatre to build a troupe is moving, but they should do it between closed walls until the members of it could become suitable to fulfil the tasks. Up until now they have not been able to fulfil the task of performing Stanislaw Wyspiañski’s poem.

I did not understand Acropolis not only because of the hearing of the speech. I could not understand what I saw. I have known a few things about the writer and the play, but I would not talk about it. It is not the referee’s work to tell theatre-historical information, the place, story or aim of the play. The performance has to tell these. I have to interpret the performance in its own without any help (programme, cast, comments, reading experiences): these can be extras for those who are interested in. Acropolis in Bárka Theatre has two parts and both of them have two half parts. During the first quarter angels with ringing wings are whispering to silent statues on telephone books paths and between foldouts of books of tales, while they are moving on lifts of constructions annoyingly noisy. During the second one beachgoers with ancient Greek names are speaking about something in the same place. From the third one we can understand the well-known (for those who know it) story of Jacob, Isaak and Esau, which is told by eastern dances and during it they are picking up the wall to wall carpet. During the last one the singer with deep voice is singing for forty minutes in Hungarian and I think in Hebrew language while the actors sitting around him are playing the drums. All of it is really artistic. I can sense it in (a rare) moment of wakefulness; I have missed its meaning. The first part is directed by Sándor Zsótér the second by Zoltán Balázs. They are the stars of art theatre but according to some professional theatre makers they are dilettantes. There is a great confusion. The condemnation without watching and the critical ideas can be decoded in advance. There are some in their surroundings according to them they should get only admire not any criticism: in case of the later one a protester letter should be written inside. Both of them – as it is normal – work on a different level. From the point of view of their reception the prejudice is common on both sides, and many times it is supported by point of views outside the aesthetics. It is natural, if the aesthetic basic ideas of theatre are unclear both from theoretical and practical point of view, the basis of the professional general opinion is the boundless subjectivity.

We do not have to go far for concrete example, we can stay in Bárka Theatre next an easier play than Wyspianski’s. Next to Ferenc Molnár’s over played Liliom. With Péter Telihay’s direction the performance is bearable. Róbert Menczel pushes the stage to the backside wall of the hall – except the Linzmann scene which is played on the embankment with the unsuccessful money robbery, for which he has built the strip and standing places around it with the tribune for viewers on the useless half of the barn – with it he can avoid to connect actions to an era. The set is a construction from iron stairs, trapdoors and podiums and it can float in nothing similarly to “a bench of parks”, for which they have to climb on a ladder. The dresses – without any personal designer’s help – can be placed only more or less, we can say that in the consolidated socialism, but it has no importance as the trend of nowadays does not take of the synchronization of the vison and text. (If declamatory Brutus in suit is a politician why Muskátné, the noble carnival vendor cannot be a craftswoman with industrial license?) The theatre itself is stylization, an elevated reality – we can “put it” anywhere, if we put it consistently into a system of rules which is pointed out by ourselves.

There is not any problem until this homogeneous new medium can work integrally on its own. Juli and Mari are sitting on the branch of nothing, they are not bothered neither by the partly intrusive “official serves”, nor by the noisy trapdoor that warns them to the roughness of their life. Kinga Mezei and Kriszta Szorcsik are traditional girls from the countryside, there are not any embroideries of servants on them, the earlier one signs barefoot the cleanliness of society, the other one with ready-to-wear clothes her integration into the city. (Edit Zeke helps her get dressed.) Both of them are good, as well as László Széles whose Liliom is an innocent boy without any coolness (would he hit his Julika? he does it but does not make us believe it), Erik Ollé’s Ficsur is dangerous and mad like, Gábor Nagypál as Hugo is not shy, but calmly firm, Olga Varjú as Muskátné is excellent, she owns man and business without any vulgarity, with some kind of dignity.

The problem starts when during the scene of the police of sky the children in white suits are serving at the altar of Kyri, because they are there in the troupe. Neither the surrounding nor the Speaker, Attila Egyed who is throwing the beach ball are not written down better. There are too many soap bubbles – there were many of them in the “Park” too – but they have not got much meaning, it also disappears. But problem never occurs alone. As the director, László Babarczy uses the patented version – the scene in the sky is not the ending of the play, as in the case of Molnár, but it is put as a vision between Liliom’s suicide stabbing and his death – here comes the agony. During which the dying hero gets alive and sits out loosely next to Juli to speak (he has lost the knife maybe in the sky, which they have not pulled out of his wound not to bleed to death on his way). Then he is back to dying. After his death he gets up once more, and he is walking out the window symbolically into the eternity. There is nothing like this. After the resurrection, which is brought earlier it is impossible to get resurrected two more times. Not even once. If the transcendence has been before, in reality he can only die. He even has to. And must believe in the viewers’ fantasy. And in the professional basis of the direction.

Tamás Koltai, Élet és Irodalom, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Maladype has a heroic fight with Acropolis by Wyspianski in the Bárka Theatre. The ghost of the place is floating there above their heads: they are fighting for theatre in the fencing hall that is hardly suitable for it. „People’s aim is the fight itself”, as the great classic writer made Adam speak flying in the space. Actors can fight only to give effect to the sentence by Madách. They fight with the text, with the circumstances, and secretly they may hope to get their aim with it. Probably they are not right. This fight can be heroic too but it does not mean theatre itself.

The premier became a gossip news in the culture media. They had something to talk about. Two of them directs a play, they do not do it together. Sándor Zsótér and Zoltán Balázs share it like brothers would do. On the base of fifty-fifty.

I did not mention The Tragedy of Men for my own sake before, as some Hungarian literature analysts put in a loose parallel next to Acropolis, Faust by Goethe and Madách’s work too, as each literary works connects together in the same drama “the culture circles which exist separately in the time”. Wyspianski has gone against anyway the usual dramatic thinking, his mythical vision throws away the hero who has a new figure in each era (as Adam or Faust). He has left the actions in their traditional way, stepped over the keeping of the time line, the direct dramaturgical line between the scenes but many times (as in the first and second scene of Acropolis) even that inner coherence that can connect together the scenes next to each other.

“The work as a poem is a whole one” – states György Spiró, the most important Hungarian translator and experimenter of Whyspianski. It is a close result of all these that there is not any theatrical tradition of the drama with four scenes, which was written in 1904. We could hear it in Hungarian on stage for the first time with Vince Hajba modern-like translation. Wyspianski – however as a set designer, consultant and not a professional director he would become a theatrical person himself too – knew the problem that was caused by the performability of his play. In his stage directions that were written also as poems (!) he mentioned many times the expression of impossibility on stage.

Acropolis is that kind of score “where there are unplayable parts”, as Spiró wrote it and “the score as a whole thing is against the performable play”. But Zsóter would not be Zsótér and Balázs would not be Balázs if they were stopped by it. Is it unperformable? Then let’s see it! Is it unsolvable and mysterious? Let’s do it!

They divided the four scenes into two (they can do it as the scenes of Acropolis can be treated as isolated plays), both of them work with their own designer team but with the same troupe, with Maladype. Zsótér gets the first two scenes (the resurrection of the angels and the legends of Troy), Balázs gets the last two (Jacob and Esau’s story, and King David’s mono drama). The two directors’ points of view, if we take into consideration their similarities and differences can be placed next to each other. On the basics. The whole thing does not work or fall because of it.

The basic story of the drama is childishly charming, Wyspianski gives the Greek Acropolis name to Wawel of Krakow, where at Easter, during the night of resurrection the statues which are there, the tombs and figures of tapestries get into life. The first two scenes, directed by Sándor Zsótér can get into life thanks to Mária Ambrus’ ingenious sets. Mari Benedek’s costumes, the silver dresses of the fight for love with their ringing wind harps and the “scene of Troy” with its togas made from big patterned terry bath sheet – one by one and together too, are brilliant.

The stage is surrounded by the line of chairs for the viewers. On the huge place in the middle there is a signed plan of a church (or castle), made by big phone books, full of with side aisles, offsets like an opened ruin from the ancient time. There are charmed, incense-scented, ghostly lights. The sight is archaic and bravely modern at the same time, it pulls us into the past, and keeps us in the present. There are human sized statues rolled on wheels threw into the place, they are not realistic according to the ancient ones, but they are really modern, they do not show imagined pictures but everyday realism. According to the director’s nice thinking the actors are talking to statues, touch them, caress them, love them, but when the statues “answer”, then the actors speak not to their actor partners but turned to another statue - that way all dramatic hero get doubled on Zsóter’s stage: they become statues and actors, artificial and real, dead and resurrected at the same time.

In the walls like tea light in a cemetery, in plastic hearts colorful laser light is dancing. At the end of the “main aisle” standing like an altar, red geraniums are lighting next to a retro coffee maker. Around the “building” there are foldout books of tales standing on their edges. Klio during the first scene grabs one of them, and he is thinking about whether throws away knowledge from himself when the resurrected ones tempt him to love. The angels are moving on goods lift which is used on constructions between the flies and stage, between the sky and earth. They “bring to life” each other from their statue like life, the antique figures of different tombs, to start a Bacchanalia full of love up until they have time and it is not getting light. We have to understand this Bacchanalia of course, from Zsótér’s point of view. Which means that this romantic over turning appears mostly in words. From the poetic text which is said by frozen face, focused on one point and in a narrative style. The actors’ task to make the melodic text of the drama plastic and understandable to the audience with that minimalist technique, which is asked by the director. For it they have to understand what they say first of all. It is hard for the ears if they are looking for words, start it many times and their speech technique is under trained. It would not be improved on the stage.

Maladype still has problem with pure speech. We can hear (if we can as the huge space can absorb sounds) Wyspianski’s rampant poetic hustle but no matter how hard we want to we cannot always understand it. It would worth to make a survey that how many people and how much could understand for the first sight from the second scene where the noble characters of Troy are hardly identifiable – I admit that not much. (However, Hector appears who is about to fight against Ajax, but we do not reach up until their fight, or Paris and Helene, the two lovers, who are making love carefree, while the others are fighting but they are just poetic symbols too.)

The third scene must be easy for the audience, as everybody knows Jacob and Esau’s biblical chapter. There is new place, new staff, new director. And yes, it is a story which can be told, it has a beginning and an end, conflict and release, lesson and tone. The original one has it. The one which is directed by Zoltán Balázs from it, does not have many.

Actors of Maladype are moving slowly like sleepwalkers around the edges of the stage which is covered by carpets in Judit Gombár’s oversized, floor long, black silver dresses with painted arms. Sometimes they stop, knee down, there are congas in their hands (Isaak holds it on his head like the symbol of his greatness), then they start moving again, with rigid postures and contrived like clock works that are winded. Their movements give frames to the play. The actions are going on in the middle of the desert made of carpets, the actors are coming towards to the players on the imagined diagonals from the edges. They are moving on and on like black ghosts, birds of death with broken wings. The cumbersomely long arms of their dresses are on the floor. There is an orange dome of drapery above them. It comes down from above for the first time at the meeting of Jacob and Rachel, it surrounds them, forms a tent for their love. Then during the fourth scene Szabolcs Hámori, the opera singer tidies it to his waist, and while he is singing he is moving around his axle slowly, then the giant skirt winds around him. Rarely happens with me that I get outside so much that I can see in front of me.

I usually immerse in it till my neck, even if it is bad. But what can I do with a theatre which does not affect but fails? It is not beautiful but does the polite. Which is over directed. It is mechanical, rigid and factory-like. Everything which is human like, they clean away from it: glance, gesture, sigh. It is over mannered. We, the viewers in spite of our wills becomes sights too, like sparkles on the Christmas tree, as we are holding awkwardly the lighting candles in our hands, Zoltán Balázs’ returning props.
Artúr Kálid gets grey into the group, Éva Bakos is frantic because of compliance, Kamilla Fátyol and Hermina Fátyol are pale, Balázs Dévai could give more of himself, Zoltán Oláh gives less from his speech problems, Kristóf Horváth as Jacob fights not only with the angel but with the role too. Nóra Parti sparkles her knowledge, when she “tries to bring to life” the valiant with sword. Ádám Tompa – not only as the valiant – tunes well into the strange theatrical atmosphere.

Szabolcs Hámori would get all respect for his performance during the 4th scene, who with professional humility and with deep empathy shows – during the night hours – with László Sáry’s composition the oratory mono drama of Kind David who is the composer of the psalms. “The angels are sitting” around him, they are the actors of Maladype. They are singing as a synchronised choir with Kornél Mogyoró’s leading. They are whispering Wyspianski’s poetic experience or they are playing it rhythmically on congas.

They are playing endlessly and we should listen to it. Whether it is weird or not, I syllabify that how many will the singer have to turn from the music.

Csaba Králl, Kritika, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

There is nothing new under the sun. Zoltán Balázs and Zsótér directed together in the Bárka Theatre with the troupe of Maladype, Acropolis by Stanislaw Wyspianski (1869-1907). Zsótér the I. and the II. Balázs the III. and the IV. scenes. Zsuzsa Barta, who was born in Moskow and Gábor Margitta, who was born in Spain directed with four hands in Győr Jarova by Ljubov (1964). They changed roles in every fifteen minutes at the post of the director to direct with the help of Russian like guttural voice or Spanish accent.

Acropolis was not directed by four hands. It is a double handed direction. Two directors’ works next to each other, who denies the same way and states differently. They are two sovereign directors of the same play, which consists of four different plays in reality. There is not a common story. The eras are different. The characters are different. The place is the same: the polish Visegrád: the castle of Wawel, the seat of the king from the middle age. It is a world built on tombs. A reality which was built on the stone-dead memories of the once great ones. The time is the same; the breaking night of Easter Sunday, the time of resurrection. Four statues of angels are thinking about the meaning of the hero’s fall. A female figure gets into life from Ankwicz’s tomb, the vivid statue of Amor joins her than, a lady from Skotnicki’s tomb.

Spiró wrote a love letter to Wyspianski in his study. He charged with conspiracy the theatre history because of the ignoring of the writer. Spiró has done a lot to make Wyspianski well known in Hungary too. He gave his writer blood to translate his dramas. As a theatre manager he made Zsóter in Szolnok direct the November night. Wyspianski is not an ill-fated writer. For non-Polish people he is hardly understandable because of his deep Polish nature. In the middle-aged castle of Krakow, the decorations come into live. The Gothic statues speak. The tapestries have comments to the everyday world, it is really Polish. I cannot even imagine a Hungarian writer, who is so similar to a magic island of the past, since Vörösmarty nobody has shown up so disillusioned the national illusions.

The viewers enter a Gothic enchanted castle. It is slowly getting lighter in the place. (They can create wonderful black places because they can light well). As the shadows of the stage get forms, it is getting lighter, Wawel, the place of actions, is not a compact papier mache. The vision is losing gradually its Gothic effect. The elements get enlightened.

Into the middle of Mária Ambrus’ place, in the blinding light, and motorized goods lift brings the characters from the deep dark sky. From the passing darkness we would be able to see that which carved figures are standing in dark tombs or laying in Gothic tombs and whether they are statues or vivid humans. The bases of the statues are telephone books, about the real plans of the castle, which is surrounded by zigzag lines, in reality we can learn that they are foldout books of tales. In the glass hearts neon flames are flashing, as the fire of a patriot’s heart. The mythological ghosts of the antique times are in beach sandals, and walking around covered with crass terry towels. Zsótér’s visual and auditive theatrical idiom uses bravely the kitsch which reaches over historical eras. Next to great feelings matches well the low and bazaar like taste. To his ghost like atmosphere matches well the decoration on the opened back side of Mari Benedek’s costumes from the chain of mental rollers, they ring during movements as wind harps hanging on the doors.

From the modern structure that is lifting up and down between the columns of the shadowed hall a floating frightening figure is singing to us. On his side there are well readable old letters – Genie. It is not announcing the ingenuity of the poet. It shows the name of the company. Zsótér’s stubborn directorial rhythm that returns in his performances, the simultaneity of the historical and modern time, the goods lift which is working in the 13th century surrounding, played well its role in Penthesilea well too. He can connect without any smartassery the illustrated historical past time with the modern everyday life. Ambrus and Zsóter do not make base for the illusion but they widen the area of imagination.

The director’s bitter humour shows the historical things which we carry with ourselves, and the present which is becoming the historical past. The action movies of the last quarter of the century changed the gothic cobwebby hunted house with its hidden doors which has been working for two hundred years to the industrial surrounding. In the finals of horror movies bad people get into glowing furnace, between the cylinders of meat grinder and industrial hooks. In our tale mythology the secret frightening world of horror as the location of the final statement was changed by the mythical structures of the frightening factor industry which is sung by the futurists. The II. scene, the dream play of Wawel happens during the Trojan wars. Its antique characters go into death for their dreamed interests. They imagine the past to present and future. They live with half attention, half-awake. Only their dead mates are alive.

At the end of the first scene as a cold shower we can hear András Bágya and György G. Dénes’ song: The time stops, on the sky there are silent standing stars / On the Earth there are only you and I... (From Paris’ mouth we can hear the text of Zsüti’s famous song: The time stops. Then during the antique scene Zsuzsa Mátray sings it: You can see this is love I never need any bigger experience...) The hits of the 60s has a lower poetic effect than Wyspianski, but they have interpretive gesture, and a powerful shock effect of its collage like nature.

During the interwall the staff takes down Mária Ambrus’ set. They built on its place Judit Gombár’s set. One does not come from the other. They are isolated, sovereign. The Fencing hall is clear. The floor of the scene of Bible is decorated with dynamic lines. (Probably it is a wall to wall carpet). Above an orange drapery is the dome.

Those instructions of the writer are the best which are written in poems. On the actors there are long, slimming, with long arm tale goth-like and Arabic dresses. Jacob’s biblical story gets into live from the Flemish wall carpet.

It is a naïve folk game, they sing and dance it with sacral aestheticism. The VI. scene – the second part of the second half of the performance in Bárka Theatre – are the psalms of King David. The drama becomes an opera. The harp player is singing coral to praise the antique and modern god. At the point of apotheosis the Wawel collapses, the Polish past and every past tense, which the Polish has carried. Here a lamp of a church comes down from the black infinity. It lights until black covers everything.

The Gombár-like drapery that comes down from the dome is Dadaist. Like a Venus from Milano, the orange sky is rolled up around the spindle like moving bass-baritone King David – around Szabolcs Hámori. He is standing there like Venus’ husband form the end of the 19th century, like an alive Dadaist parody of sculpture. He is singing endlessly. Ten people are sitting around him. They are following him discreetly on drums. They are watching more carefully than the viewers who are over tested in the 4th hour of the performance. The acoustic and spatial relations of Bárka Theatre would make it even more suitable to the Fencing Hall of Ludovika, however theatre is played there from time to time.

If János Arany – in case of whom we cannot talk about legal protection – had translated any Shakespeare so similarly to Imre Vahot as Vince Hajba had done with the I. scene, they would have made Vince Hajba work it over. Every parts, scenes would be sound in different metre and in different relations (if the actors had been able to tell these poems). In the rhythm of dance there are crunchy ripostes. There is growing dynamism. The poems are more and more dance like from scene to scene. Their ordered rhythm makes harder the composer, László Sáry’s work. It is hard to musicalize the music.

Artúr Kálid is the most understandable as “elderly” Isaac. Ádám Tompa have power and shining for it. Kamilla Fátyol can articulate more safely than Hermina Fátyol. As Kristóf Horváth tells the text, he gloomy excludes the viewers from the performance. Nóra Parti, Balázs Dévai, Éva Bakos are wavering between the readiness of their characters and the half-ready solutions. Kornér Mogyoró the musician with his concentration melts into the performance. Zoltán Oláh speech can be better, but his ethereal, oneiric walking, his enchanted presence on the stage can over pay well his articulatory dept.
Acropolis lasted until eleven o’clock on the dress rehearsal. Since then it has become half an hour shorter.

Péter Gál Molnár, szinhaz.hu, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)