There are artistic studies that are walking, they are well grown, well moved, they live and perform on a billiard table, we can mean it by words, or they are just pushing the balls, in the Platonov by Maladype Theatre. Why is there a billiard table in the middle of the space? It is much easier to answer to it, that to the question that what makes this performance move. However, seemingly something makes the actors perform very much, who try to move everything. But to where?

Nikolai Ivanovich Triletsky is waiting there, pushing the balls, for everybody to get their seats around the stage on the auditorium, then the real game can begin. The others join in the happenings gradually from the auditorium, and they begin new matches on the table and between each other. The whole cavalcade of one night, and the happenings of the other day go on here, this tiny part of the performing space is Anna Petrovna Voynitseva’s house, this is the garden, the living room, the bedroom, it is everything. Platonov’s provoked arguments appear here, he gets all the women’s heart, who live in the house here, Sergei Pavlovich Voynitsev has to grow up here, and here Isaac Abramovich Vengerovich falls out with his father, Abram and later he makes up with him here. However, these never-ending counting, games of roles, seductions, intrigues, tricks, complexes cannot get on surface with their admiring horrifying nature, they are just rolling on and on the stage.

However, the actors can seemingly and feelingly exist in their roles very deeply, surrounding with sure holdings. The dynamic, sometimes little bit exaggerated, abrupt beginning is later explained by all performances and continuously cleaning it down. From Ákos Orosz’s mouth, movements and looks Platonov’s all speech can be understood by words, there are not any letters in Chekov’s play, which cannot be found in this performance. In Orosz’s performance, Platonov is passionate, short-tempered, calculative and fallen at the same time, he falls in love honestly with all women, he can confess love from his heart, it is another question that he means sex by love. Anyway, he knows himself punctually too, he knows accurately what and when will happen, and what he will do with the women. Zoltán Lendváczky as Sergei performs a complex growing into mature, he turns the initial naïve, childishly playful and energic gestures from one moment to the other, with perfect dramaturgical feeling he can turn into a grown-up empty, disappointed man’s view of life, who is laying under the failure. In his performance the most descriptive one, as the initial naughty man, makes disappear the always witty elements of humour and plays from the figure, and from one moment to the other only disappointment remains in his place.

Zénó Faragó really purely and only with a few gestures opens Isaac’s figure; his light stresses are so expressive, when we are talking about a moral crusader, and a cruel rich one, who is drunken with power. Judit Kovács Ligeti’ Anna is full of suppressed feelings, desires, but she is a ruling woman. Erika Tankó’s Sasha shows the real understanding and loving wife, she is the real pair for life, walking on two legs, who cannot bear only the humiliation. While Anna’s gestures are exploding, when she is alone with Platonov, Sasha is calm and balanced all through the performance, in contrast with Kamilla Fátyol’s Sofia, who is stressed when she sees the man. While Fátyol’s performance seems to be very rigid at the beginning, but when she shows her inside along with the patterns of her character, with her almost imagined feelings, she can make all her wanderings justified. Vica Kerekes’ Maria is balancing between the passion and rigidness, the actress can change almost suddenly after the total madness and crying into the insensitivity, which is forced between strict rules. She can play with her role as much as with Platonov. Ádám Tompa gets only a time of a scene to open Nikolai, as the second one he almost spends sitting on a chair, but he can do it during that time, and he shows the still immature man, who tells deadly serious jokes. Zsolt Páll’s Abram is the pure official and reserved one, he shares his conservative ideas, but in reality the same kind of calculation and pettiness is hidden behind him, as in the case of his son.

The billiard table is a good idea, it can express well that play, which pushes them back and forth, which is going on the stage, but as it can do it at the first moment, it can do it in the last one too. There is not any change between the two. The only thing is, that sometimes the balls become skulls, moneys, then roses – it can be told endlessly, as this little table can mean everything. But this endless line will end anyway, even before it can become exciting, as ideas come only sometimes, but on one hand they cannot make the performance varied, and on the other hand, because of their minimal character, they are accidental and unorganised. Bea Molnár paints the billiard table the same black and beige, as the styled modern costumes too, and this colourlessness cannot make us forget the colourlessness in its figurative sense – however it is not its work anyway.

Anyway the performance should be made exciting not by the vision, but by those kind of organising expressing elements and ingenious concentration, which Zoltán Balázs, the director would avoid with pleasure. With Judit Góczán dramaturg, put Platonov on stage, with its untouched whole nature. However, all relationships are interpreted on their own from every points of view, but because of this impatience they are not interpreted from one point of view, which would make justified, understandable and clear the others. The actors’ energetic works, Platonov’s kisses with all the women are for nothing, he wallows on the billiard table and comes up with the possibility of homosexuality for nothing too. The drama books, walking on two legs are vivid, but they are so confident and too casual that they are too far away from the viewers in spite of their all physical closeness. The courtship, meanness, kissing is just going on endlessly – but we do not know why?

Attila Nyulassy, 7óra7, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

There are colours, numbers and sixteen version of the perfect geometrical form of the ball: the billiard table, the balls, the game itself keep a definite symbolism, which is variable by content but is not defined from closer point of view. In the Arizona Studio of the Thália Theatre, the billiard table can stand massively, up until it can handle the changing of functions, meaning. The three and half hours are long for it too.

The newest choice of Maladype Theatre is Anton Pavlov Chekov’s first started play (even before he became twenty years old), but he could not finish it, and it did not get a final title, it was thought to be lost for a long time, however it can give the joy of free reconstruction to the director. Zoltán Balázs has made a version, which concentrates on viable, lost young – or that have become young – figures (dramaturg: Judit Góczán) As two of the characters have a name Vengerovich (“Hungarian”), than he makes the play, which has a usual meaning into a little bit Hungarian, however neither the application of the poem, Black country by Babits, who was almost the peer of Chekov, and he quotes it as “The country of the black ball”, nor the local understandable quotation of The Elf of Today in Thália (and it can be decoded from the point of view of Chekov’s The Elf) is not the most successful one. The text has to be connected to the incidental happenings of the billiard game, which can be regular or irregular, it can be played well or not. The uncountable rolling of the balls can be corrected with good words, with appropriate improvisations, anyway especially at the beginning, the changing excitement of the games and accidental joyfulness can come through the replica. The table (above it the lights of the source of light make us remember the Fibonacci-line – on the long sides there are twenty-one, on the short ones thirteen bulbs) with the surrounding parts: it is the field of war, the boxing ring, where the fights of the characters with each other, and mainly those characters’ fights, who cannot get on well with the main character are expressed (the set and costume are designed by Bea Molnár).

The playground can be anything, from the table of eating until the bed of love affairs. As well as the cue (if we need it is an armour), the chalk (once a box of matches), any of the balls (coins, letter, in a doubled way, glasses), the group of the balls (firework), the clothes, the six pockets, all successful and failed pushes, crashes, and the placement of balls become symbolic. We can hear the question more: “What is your plan?”, and the asked one, tries to avoid the traps, the misconception, the disappointments of fate, the pressure of the undecided ability, with Chekov-like humour he could answer: the purple full four into the left corner, the yellow striped nine into the middle one. And then they would go in or not. The balls crash, lives fail, which are unplanned, planed badly, based on lies, and went into smoke. It can be felt, that the initial joviality can become harsh sooner or later, those who cannot find their happiness and place, can lose their temper.
After the long winter, still in the colours of coldness, freeze – in the white, grey, black and brown dresses – the almost equal (antique)heroes get together. Platonov, who tells himself now to be twenty-five, and becomes a teacher in a village, after leaves his university studies in half, he is the “Don Juan and hero of slippers, who winds all women in his surrounding (in this version his wife, and three others) around his finger. He promises them, he cares them, he humiliates them, he chases them into extasy or death, without any real aims or desire. Platonov gets into the focuses of the men’s (their number is four now) aims, attacks and protections. From the eternal conflicts, the finally unbeatable remorse, the silly view of existence he escapes into suicide. All still alive figures have a reason, to point a cue to the Platonov’s body, who is standing on the table (one as a gun, to his forehead). It is a wonderful moment: the suicide happens as a murder.

It is not great at all, that the strange human sculpture has to be demolished, the keeping cues must be left so the dead one can collapse between the balls, and sentences can be told above him in the darkness. The table, as the time is going on, is not a playmate anymore, it is not a symbolic tool, which divides the space, it is a giant barrier instead. The balancing on its edge and the tricks are artificial. The replacement, the losing of the structure of signs are problems too. If the often, drunken state is enough to be express by words without drinking, leaning on the clothes and signing by it, a suddenly appearing sounds of a harmonica can expressly partly the image of drinking wine. It is possible, that a much shorter, more economical drama text can bring our attention less from the unruled heaviness of the central object, which is well found.

The actors are devoted partners of the director, who has done thorough analyzation, who wants a lot, by the premiere he is not ready with the interpretation, but he is indulgent with the text. However, their performance still has changing intensity, and can be seen partly. Sometimes emptiness reigns the space. Isaac Abramovich’ look is not shining at the moment. Sofia Yegorovna is not lazy or prink at the moment, they tell it for nothing. Those many forced movements, the deliberately pale using of space, which is sometimes overchoreographed, make the performers (in their passive moments they are sitting in the first line next to the viewers) do punishing circles.

The female choir’s performance is more balanced than the men’s, Judit Kovács Ligeti has no nuances, she repeats grindingly stressed the widow’s words, Voynitseva’s words, who is stubborn but cannot get right to her wants as well as the others. Erika Tank ó can express vividly, airily Sasha’s fatal mental breakdown, because of the emotional failure and cheating. Kamilla Fátyol’s Sofia by the price of self-cheating can believably get back her common past with Platonov. Vica Kerekes, the guest performer, characterises Maria with reticent exaltation, which is raised by perplexity. Zsolt Páll’ (Vengerovich) knocking speech, his dryness is not always enough for the Jewish businessman’s self-confidence, which is unshakable for a while, and weaken by sorrow. Ádám Tompa over heated nature is not the best for doctor Triletsky’s character, who is always ruined by another loan. Zénó Faragó’s less divided performance does not show us, why Isaac, who sponges on his hated father, arrives and leaves that way, as he does, and Zoltán Lendváczky’s Sergei becomes pale from time to time.

Ákos Orosz’s teenager like, naughty Platonov can play from his guts his mental, oiled by cynicism. From time to time, in spite of his reckless nature, his flowing self-sabotage, his asocial and immoral work, which can ruin others’ future, we can see Platonov’s relative extraordinary nature, his tragic ego, which points also towards Ivanov’s main character. In its parts for the loss of humans, which has not been reasoned fully by Chekov too, he can offer an excuse from one hand with the clowning tricks, which influences his surroundings too, on the other hand with his bitterness of his sparkling reasoning power from his lost near past. Orosz is suitable to get the other eight characters around him, and keeps them in continuous excitement, opposition, in attraction and repulsion.

The friendly and refined try of the Maladype – similarly to most of the performances of the troupe – can become better thanks for continuous work, staging and artistic self-critic.

Tamás Tarján, Kultúra.hu, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The Chekov’s play on Hungarian stages

The first Hunagrian Platonov(s) were staged by Jenő Horváth but István Horvai had the first big success(es) with the play. Maybe the best performance so far has been staged by Tamás Ascher. But it is worth remembering Tamás Fodor, Péter Telihay, Gábor Rusznyák and Ivo Krobot and Jurij Kordonszkij, then Róbert Alföldi and János Szász’s staging too. And we can remember those many wonderful actors’ performances too – either in the main role or in the other similarly exciting figures.

Jenő Horváth and István Horvai’s Platonovs

As Platonov in its original version is unsuitable for staging – because of its 200 pages length and confusing branches of its motifs in the first act – all the performances of it uses some versions (mostly made for that exact performance) of it. It does not only mean the shortening of the play, but the leaving of some characters, the connection of some characters, and sometimes the over grouping of the scenes too. That is why all new Platonov performance is different. And because of the fact, that the interpretation of Chekov’s heroes become different too, as well as the theatrical language, which tries to express all these as a contemporary experience.

In Hungary the play was first performed in 1963, in Eger, with the title of Platonov’s loves (the main characters were performed by Éva Spányik, Ottó Szabó, Bűrös Gyöngyi), the director was Jenő Horváth. He (with the same title) made a television play of it in 1967. (Platonov: Iván Darvas, Voynitseva: Margit Bara, Sofia: Teri Tordai). Jenő Horváth put the play on stage in Szolnok too in 1980 (the main characters were: Sándor Téri, Irén Bordán, Csaba Ivánka).

The success of Platonov in Hungary was supported by the fact, that Nyikita Mihalkov made the film, Etudes on the piano machine in 1977, which was based mostly on the character, situations and motifs of Platonov. The film was shown in the Hungarian cinemas too in 1978 and between the educated ones it had cultic popularity. “The Etudes on the piano machine (the title is not perfect in Hungarian, in Russian it is The Unfinished play on the piano machine) was made from Chekov’s short stories and his early play, titled Platonov...” – György Spiró wrote it about the film.

“Many wonderful actors, who all know, that the Chekov-characters personal truth has a limited validity, they are tragic and funny at the same time, and they can show this ability according to the realistic traditions, without winking, illustration, taking notes. All failed lives, unfulfilled aims... The film is about the lack of something, and of Platonov’s aging and hopelessness, who is performed by Kaljagin, who becomes an ordinary overweight teacher from the once promising educated lover. While all the characters’ fate varriate his one. Anyway, the reason of this loss, according to the Chekov-dramaturgic roles, cannot be learnt from the film, even the question itself is meaningless. The ending picture relativizes on the story, which is in present tense all through the time. Next to photo shooting, this is the other method of historicism in the film, which has already created distance with the ironic showing of the acceptance of the piano machine (the technician), which is emphasized in the title too. So, everything, which we can see, is put in quotation marks more, we can always see the same thing from different point of view, and this dynamism can give very tensed, excellent rhythm to the naturalistic performing style.”

István Horvai put on stage Platonov at the same time. First he did it during the university in 1978, with György Dörner, Csaba Jakab, János Bán, Edit Frajt, Krisztina Kovács and Görbe Nóra’s performances. The Theatre newspaper remembers the “extraordinary successful performance of the university” in 1978: “The actors and the viewers were sitting so close in the room without any stage, that they were almost integrated during the performance: who spoke and acted was only one of those, who were there, because of some accidental choice, he spoke and not the viewer did, who was sitting next to him. Because of it, the responsibility for the spoken words and performed movements, was common too: the viewers could not push away easily the presence of Platonov.”

One of the interesting thing in connection with Horvai’s staging in the university was, that in one version György Dörner performed Platonov and Csaba Jakab did Voynitsev, in the other version they changed their roles, the situation was similar with Sofia and Gerkova’s roles too, which were performed by Krisztina Kovács and Nóra Görbe by turns. Anna Petrova’s role was performed by either Edit Frajt or by Erzsébet Pataki. That way, two different types of performances were born, in spite of the fact, that the other roles were constant. (Triletsky: Sándor Gáspár; Isaac: János Bán, Osip: László Földi, Sasha: Klára Leviczky, Katia: Vera Pap.) “The fact that the youngsters did not want to cut all the wilding definitely but they used them passionately and made an exceptionally vehement performance from them, gave a special tension to it. It was shocking, that they could experience the total hopelessness at that young age” – Gábor Bóta remembered the performance that way.

Horvai put Platonov on stage in the Pesti Theatre too, in the April 1981. “On the Hungarian stages, István Horvai was the one, who started the most consistently redrew our Chekov-picture” – Tamás Mészáros wrote it in connection with the performance. “He has left the compulsory »pastel nature« and tired melancholy out of the Uncle Vanya and The Three Sisters too, then in The Cherry Orchard he went on the furthest on a rigid – sometimes a little bit »two fixed« Becket-like conception. The present performance of Platonov in the Pesti Theatre is a honourable top of this series – and let me state my own opinion: it is a masterpiece. This performance – creation is between those few ones of the last decades, which can move on in reality the Hungarian staging.”

“Such a dynamic and unique performance was born in Hungary a long time ago” – Tibor Balogh thought it, he also emphasized the complexity of the interpretations of roles and the artistic performance of the group. “The performance was created with wonderful artistic work” – István Morvay wrote it. “All performances must be appreciated one by one by superlative forms. This cast has no weak point at all. [Sasha: Judit Halász; Triletsky: Géza Tordy; Anna: Erika Szegedi; Voynitsev: Sándor Lukács; Sofia: Ilona Béres; Grekova: Vera Venczel.] László Tóth Tahi’s Platonov is the high-levelled example of the full identification. The actor does not remain in our debt with any of the characteristics of this rich personality, and he makes the character similar to himself that way, that we can feel authentic all of his cries, and cutting movements.”

Tibor Balogh wrote, that “László Tóth Tahi’s performance – thanked for Horvai’s uniquely sensitive staging – could create that magic with which he was able to form that typically Russian, typically Hungarian, typically Central – European, typically from the XIX. century but typically modern figure in its whole complexity. When suddenly the music stopped, and he woke up, he came out so slowly in his old-fashioned gown, as Oblomov did, but the memory of music and some flashes of his eyes made us suddenly remember Visotsky. When he provoked, exposed, fired up some fake bonfire then burned to the ground by his talent, he talked offhandedly as Chatsky did, and as aggressively as Bazarov, but he was more similar to the Herceg Pista from the Lament for the Caretaker.” (István Csurka’s Lament for the Caretaker was performed in 1978 in the Vígszínház, it was staged by Horvai.)

Theatrical critics chose Horvai’s Platonov to be the best performance of the season 1980-81. (But there was not any awarding, as those, who ordered culture politics then, prohibited to award Mihály Kornis’ Hallelujah as the best play in that year, so the critics decided not to give out any awards. So Platonov could get the award of theatrical critics only in the December 1988.)

Platonov appeared on Hungarian stage again in 1989: Levente Kovács directed it in Szatmárnémeti. (Platonov: József Czintos, his wife: Kati Földes, the general’s wife: Kati Méhes, Voynitsev: Miklós Parászka.)

Tamás Ascher’s staging

Tamás Ascher’s staging was performed in May 1990, in the József Katona Theatre – first in Paris, than in Budapest. The Platonov was an excellent performance, which closed properly the first great era of the Katona Theatre. (Platonov: Géza Balkay, the general’s wife: Juli Básti, Sofia: Dorottya Udvaros, Voynitsev: Péter Blaskó, Triletsky: Gábor Máté.)

“It is not political theatre, it is not politically active performance. It is only about us, with heart-breaking honesty, movingly, and with as much cruelty and irony, as we would deserve” – Judit Szántó wrote about it. Then she compared the performance to Horvai’s staging: “Ascher told something totally different than Horvai did (and than probably all Platonov performances before). The older master was the more optimistic one, so he was stricter to Platonov. He could watch and judged Platonov from outside, the Platonov of the today Hungarian educated ones, who, according to him, would have had the ability to live more cleverly, to manage their own skills better to themselves and to the society. The shot Platonov would sentence himself finally, when he wiped off his name from the black board: he did not deserve even this chalk-short immorality. Ascher could watch his hero from outside and inside at the same time, and in his interview, which he gave to Liberation, he talked about the monument, which was built on behalf of people with lost soul.

Chekov made his hero tell: ...I killed this two innocent, weak women. I do not feel sorry for it, if I killed them in any other way, with wild passion, as the Spanishes did it...But that way... so stupidly, in a Russian way...” There are five more minutes than from the performance and from Platonov’s life; he does not think than that in five minutes he will die in that “Russian way”. As he has lived in the Russian way. He, the educated one. In the soul killer, soft corrupting stage of Chekov’s time, the modern version of which, we lived all in, could make Chekov’s world so fantastically and spookily alive. Tamás Ascher grabbed the parallel in the last moment, when the victims are still between and inside us”.

“Ascher here goes on with one step, than in the case of legendary performance of The Three Sisters” – a German critic wrote in in connection with guest performance of Platonov in Berlin. – “He threw himself with incredible curiosity on the figures, through their postures, gestures, rhythm of speech, he has found out life stories for them, which can write on and fill up Chekov. The characters are so frighteningly live and presented, that they can stand on stage even if they have nothing to tell. Anyway, the silent playing on and together never want to get into the foreground, in reality we can realise only in the end, and it shocks us, as the presence of the viewers, who are moving, and get confused in themselves, and enthusiastic at the same time, can free the play from all kind of obviosity.

This director could fulfil and ruin at the same time the codified convention of the Chekov-performance since Stanislavsky. The ending: the frantic violence, which reaches people suddenly, after they have moved back frightened and sobered behind the glass wall of the hall as pale masks.

The performance has been made unique by the actors’ intensity, who get the pure terror, from the ordinary life. That kind of tragedy can ruin the most comic scenes, which can rise the situations in Russia from the end of the last century to be present and usual. From the thick material of the performance, from its intensity, which causes almost physical pain, that kind of “realist theatre” will be drown, in which the actors give literally body for people, and what they play that can become the life itself, it is not illusion. It becomes a form of play, which wants the actors’ whole personalities to itself and it puts the viewers to test too. The performance is the common masterpiece of the punctuality and freedom. So those who can immerse well into the text of the actual play, they can get so far.”

Péter Telihay and Gábor Rusznyák’s performances

In 1996 happened the next Hungarian Platonov performance: Imre Csiszár staged it in Pécs. Then the next year, with the title of: Without father, Erzsébet Gaál made a performance from the play in the Várszínház. (It was her last performance.)

In 1999, Péter Telihay put it on stage in Szeged. (Platonov: Zoltán Seress, Anna Petrovna: Gizi Fekete, Sofia: Krisztina Czifra.) The performance in Szeged was emphasised made on behalf of other kind of theatrical ideas than the realistic performance in Katona. In Telihay’s staging, the actors’ performance could obviously mark the human content of the scenes, it made clear the relationships between the figures too. But the staging – in harmony with the characteristics of this version of the text – did not try to build punctually the scenes. The situations are not detailed here, and the micro situations are not specified. Not all of it was possible, because the set did not want to rise an illusion. The place in Szeged was an open theatre, which was bared until the walls, which was divided by tiny slopes and podiums. There are furniture, mostly chairs, and some armchairs, randomly in the space. They mark some stressed points. On the left side, in the middle, there is a cupboard, in the background, on the right there is a piano on a podium, in the background of the stage there is a long dining table. In this stressed theatrical space, Telihay did not put on stage those parts of text as scenes of pictures of life, which have referred to situations of life. It has become clear right after the first scene, when Telihay makes Anna Petrovna and Triletsky (Tamás Jakab), and Glagolev (Péter Andorai) and Voynitsev (Géza Fazakas) tell their texts parallel. That way he has organised a kind of simultaneous scene from them, and he did not build the situation of waiting for the guests (as Chekov did it) but he emphasized the emblematic content of the sentences instead.

This kind of building method on the stage is characteristic to the other points of the performance too. Here the appearance of different characters do not widen the situations and build it on with newer moments, but they just come up with newer topics and sounds instead into the stressed theatrical world.

In 1999, an exam performance was staged on the university from Platonov, by Andor Lukáts’ staging. In the following year Gábor Rusznyák, who was still a university student then, put the play on stage in Kaposvár. “It is a very carefully worked out performance” – Melinda Sőregi wrote about it. – “It is striking, that somebody was sleeping on the stage, at the beginning of each act. At the beginning of the first act it was Triletsky, in the second one, Platonov was. All of it cannot be accidental, it marks, that which characters we will see in a strongly »transformed« state at the end of each acts. Triletsky becomes more drunken than usual, and Platonov has to face up with death. The first part is finished with a wonderful firework, the second one is topped by a rain, which has intensifying intensity. The play of colour and lights are also opposite in the two parts. The first act is shiningly light, it happens in an unrealistic white light, the second one changes into a cave-like darkness. The rhythm of the two acts are the same: they start from the slow, sleepy laziness and reach their peak point in shockingly dramatic finishing.

The actors’ performance reach back to the most fertile era of the traditions in Kaposvár. It is psychological realism, mixed with the right amount of irony.” (Platonov: László Keszég; Voynitsev: Viktor Nagy, Anna Petrovna: Erzsébet Bodor, Sofia: Kata Fekete.)

Rusznyák made an exam performance from play in 2001 on the university in Marosvásárhely (A performance without title). Here he concentrated on just the young ones’ stories. Besides the main characters only Osip and the young Voynitsev appeared in the performance. (In the other version in Kaposvár, Rusznyák used more characters from the older ones too.) In Marosvásárhely, after leaving the figures of the everyday pictures of life, a chamber play was formed in reality, which concentrated mostly on the love complications between the characters. (Platonov: Eduárd Szabó, Trilestky: Zsolt Zayzon, Sofia: Nóra Szabadi, Anna Petrovna: Hilda Péter, Voynitsev: Csaba László, Grekova: Katalin Berekméri) Similarly, to Péter Telihay’s performance in Szeged, this one in Marosvásárhely tried to widen and even distended the frames of the realistic method of building of stage, which is offered by the play (which the performance of Katona filled with modern performing). Gábor Rusznyák made the grotesque elements more powerful on the one hand, and gave more strengthened role to the elements of mood on the other hand, in the creation of these the musical motifs has a key role. The melody of The evenings by the side of the River Moscow came back many times, and was fulfilled in the closing picture of the first act. First just three men started singing. Then the glasses of vodka appeared, one by one in their hands. Then we could hear the jazz version of The eveneings by the side of the River Moscow, its widened version, and a general dancing, bacchanal, enjoying started because of it. The party began, which left all the inhibitions behind, in which everybody tried to get rid of their frustration. Rusznyák though on freely the situation here. It happened on other important points of the performance too. The ideas of performance left the realistic situations bravely behind many times, it built them on in an associative way, and formed independently valued, many times surrealistic scenes from them.

János Szász made an exam performance from Platonov in Budapest, on the University of Theatre Arts in 2003 (The performers were: Balázs Czukor, Iván Fenyő, Kristóf Gál, Zsolt Máthé, Béla Mészáros, Dénes Száraz, Milán Vajda, Zsuzsa Járó, Adél Jordán, Patrícia Kovács, Kata Péter, Anna Szandtner.)

Performances from 2004 (Ivo Krobot and Tamás Fodor’s works)

Ivo Krobot put the play on stage in 2004 in Nyíregyháza. (Platonov: Andres Schlanger, Anna Petrovna: Olga Varjú, Sofia: Zita Széles, Voynitsev: Attila Petneházy, Triletsky: Attila Avass.) In the performance in Nyiregyhaza, the main character is more the target than the arrow. Platonov by András Schlanger was calm, happy man, who was ready to make jokes, who did not have much problem neither with life, nor with the others. That way the performance left that kind of play, which usually get key role in the performances: may Sonia recognise her former acquaintance (and lover) from the university, in Platonov. In Ivo Korbot’s performance in Nyíregyháza, Platonov simply stood in front of Sonia, opened his arms (the clown-like posture can mean greeting as well as feeling sorry for something). Yes, it is me – he told, and started talking about, what he has become – he did it loudly, laughing, without any kind of apology. Meanwhile he was hugging his wife’s shoulder, as he would accept proudly not only the fact, that he was a teacher but a father too.

In the performance in Nyíregyháza, one situation turned naturally into the other one, the scenes were connected to one another with mosaic like technique, mostly the defined frame of life of the whole scene could keep them together. Because of the result of fast changings, relationships in connection with defined situations could be formed moments by moments, as it happened in the Katona performance. (The performance in Nyíregyháza kept the most characters from the play, here were always some figures – as in the case of Chekov – who could not be got into the situation naturally.) The elements of mood became more and more emphasized. Here a pianist greeted the entering Sofia, later emotional and joyful melodies follow the play. The men stand in rows in front of the woman to be able to give their buckets to her. Shcherbak (Tibor Gyuris) – as an old home clown – hid his eyes and tried to enchant the woman of the house with funny words. Voynitsev (Attila Petneházy) smilingly turned his new woman in front of the old friend of the house, then when she let him kiss her arm, he clapped them with enthusiasm. “Cupid when you will become a soldier” – Shcherbak greeted Platonov laughing. “My breast is weak” – he said and then with a fast movement got into the pose of a tuberculous one. Krobot with these tiny clown-jokes made those funny moments of the text visible, which the Hungarian performances usually forget. (These short examples can express well the pictures of mood of the performance and it method of building, which puts the moments of gestures in the centre.)

In 2004, Tamás Fodor also put on stage a Platonov with the title of Buffoon in the theatre in Újvidék. (Platonov: Áron Balázs, Anna Petrovna: Kriszta Szorcsik, Voynitsev: Gábor Nagypál, Sofia: Kinga Mezei, Triletsky: Attila Magyar.) “In spite of the series of losses the performance is not a tragedy, it is only a tragic-comedy, which combines comic with some sadness, as the title refers to it, as the changing of the arc of the performance expresses it” – László Gerold wrote it about the performance in the Ellenfény. – “If we starts from there, that in this story everybody is a loser, and they are losers instead of being teachers in the countryside, who has ruined their life, who does not have any other consolation and (self)-justification, than that first he performed the occasional Don Juan, than the also occasional Misanthrope. After all, we rightfully think that this performance is not about mostly the Buffoon-like Platonov, but about the others. When in the ending scene Platonov, who thought himself to be the blind Oedipus, surrounded by the three caring/devoted women, left the stage, then the women are pitiful instead of him. They became the victims of self-cheating, when they thought that they are old, cowardly between those who try to be flirtatious, as he is different from them, Platonov is the right one, he is the man, who means salvation for them. However, he is just a buffoon, it is not for sure, that he is a man, as the women have thought about him, maybe he just plays the irresistible man, who overwhelms them.”

In 2004, there was one more Platonov performance, which was put on stage by Andreea Vulpe in the Csíki Kátékszínben. The next year Péter Galambos made a performance in the Summer Theatre in Zsámbék. (Platonov: Ottó Lajos Horváth, Anna: Zsuzsa Csarnóy, Triletsky: Csaba Debreczeny, Sofia: Éva Naszlady.)

Örkény Theatre, Maladype, Marosvásárhely

In 2007 Jurij Kordonszkij made a performance from the play in the Örkény Theatre with the title of: Without Father. (Platonov: László Széles, Anna Petrovna: Éva Kerekes, Voynitsev: Csaba Debreczeny, Sofia: Anikó Für, Triletsky: Pál Mácsai.) “The main new aspect and positive side of the performance of the Örkény Theatre, is its mood, which uses strong, grotesque colours, which can show very comic the represented world” – the Ellenfény wrote it, about the performance.

Similarly, to the comical ideas of performance, the drawings of the situations and figures are ruled by the grotesque colours. The grotesque ideas of performance, which rule the performance, are not just awkward in a funny way, but many times they show the figures irretrievably comic, only the illusion of human greatness can live in them. All of these are true with the restriction, as the whole performance does not questionize the human truth of the characters. All of them live through deeply and suffer from their emotional storms, love passions. All of them face up with their fate in their dilemmas and doubtful decisions. From an outside point of view, all of it can be petty and funny many times. This overall look (it is fulfilled in the ideas of performance) comes from the contrast between the director’s irony and the authenticity, which can be found in the actors’ performances.

One of the biggest virtue of the Without Father, which was put on stage by Kordonszkij, that we could see convincing performances in it, which are mostly built on the characters’ inner truth. So in the actors’ performances we cannot find any distances (if we like better: comic atmosphere), which the director’s ideas can add to the figures. As a result of it, we can see them from two different points of view at the same time. Their whole personalities are put to test in the self-crisis, which are shown in the performance, and they mostly fail them too. Somehow they seem to be pettier than their own fate, which they live through very intensively and deeply.”

In 2010, the Maladype Theatre performed Zoltán Balázs’ staging. “The performance of Maladype puts in brackets those problems of society, which are determining in the text by Chekov. And they make an emphasized performance of a generation from it” – the Ellenfény wrote it about the performance. This Platonov is mostly about the youngsters, about the world of those, who are less than thirty. In Chekov’s text the generation of fathers is represented strongly, however, in the performance of Maladype there is only one character, who is older than thirty. Vengorovich (Zsolt Páll), who melts older Chekov-figures in himself (mostly Glagolev). ... In this young »play«, which is ruled mostly by the characters under thirty, obviously love becomes the main character, the confusion of feelings, the chaos of attractions and choices, which can fill life with restlessness and unpredictability.”

In 2011, in the National Theatre of Marosvásárhely, Zsolt Harsányi put on stage a performance from the Platonov. “Zsolt Harsányi’s staging also concentrates on the eternal and ageless problem of the play: the useless people, who seem to be funny from outside, many times they are petty and minimal, and they are ruined by lows and they have a fate, which rots away slowly. Because of it those aspects of the text, which are connected more to political system and social problems, are pushed into the background” – Balázs Urbán wrote it about the performance. – “ The first act of the performance – which interprets the play from the point of view of farce – shows its more comical side, between the gags and funny performing ideas, there are more and more frightening, parts of scenes, which has darker tone. In the end, during the second act the performance becomes the useless people’s grotesque dance of death.” “There is one striking hiatus of the clear and consistently fulfilled interpretation: Harsányi has boosted the petty comedy of the happenings so far, that in the end besides the self-reflection and viable alternatives also the form disappears. Not only from the pitiful side characters, but from the main characters too, who can mostly see their own situations. Behind the collapse we can hardly see the once complete something, behind the rolled mountains of vodka, the wasted talent cannot be seen well.”

Róbert Alföldi and János Szász’s performances

In 2014, Róbert Alföldi created a performance from the play in the Radnóti Theatre with the title, Without Father. “Platonov is the centre of this well planed and well operated world on stage: Zsolt László, who shows form that way (it cannot be anything else) or the rest of it, that he never turns towards the whiny, suffering self-pity. He fights in his own way, but he does not hope.”What is that?” – this is the opening sentence of the performance, in Annamária Radnai’s translation. Zsolt László’s Platonov, with his existence tells, that “This is”. Meanwhile, everybody (women and men, lovers and friends) waits the salvation from him, all of them reflect their desires on him – or call him to account their own failures. Sasha, his wife – Marcella Andrusko – does it too, for whom the life means the un-reflected reality itself, the simple rules, which can put reality in a frame: her unquestioning devotion toward Platonov, comes from it, and her disappointment comes from it too” – Lívia Ölbei wrote it about the performance, in the Ellenfény.

“The peal point of the performance is Adél Kováts and Zsolt László’s goodbye scene at the shower, in the shower, with their virtuoso drunken state. They become wet, from many point of views. In this scene, all the wealth is shown and concentrated, because of which, it is hard to perform Chekov, but we must do it. The bottles, filled with red vine, come out of the cupboard, as in a comedy (and how beautifully the bottles are shining in the light, which are filled with red liquid), while we can see total hopelessness, the true pain and the wasted life. There are always more qualities: the wonderful Anna Petrovna starts snoring, when she falls asleep; so that is all about dreams.”

In 2017, János Szász put Platonov on stage in Kecskemét. The main character was Pál Kocsis, Triletsky: Viktor Nagy, Anna Petrovna: Gyöngyvér Bognár. Voynitsev: Zsolt Zayzon, Sofia: Fruzsina Märcz. “János Szász’s staging does not simply show a company, surrounding, which centre is the teacher, or where he is the catalyst of the happenings, but he shows everything and everybody through Platonov, all the other characters can be understood according to their relationships to him” – Balázs Urbán wrote about it. – “The performance mixes carefully and cleverly the realism with theatricality: the performance starts with basic situation of theatrical rehearsal, with private speeches, with private telephone calls, than soon after the natural surroundings of the story is created. Dóra Gyarmati rich and spectacular set, in the carefully furnished, room-sized place, shows the props of the performing traditions of Chekov-plays and the expression of the everyday Russian life, (in some of its details it shows witty theatrical references: the deckchairs for example, are decorated with Chekov’s portraits), while the carpet on the floor stylizes immediately the performance. A pair of rail is put on the lawn later, on which a little handcar is moving. The nice irony can be felt in some formation of characters, but the performance is mostly realistic – and according to the conception it is defined by Pál Kocsis, who performs Platonov. Kocsis performs a robust figure, from one block, colourfully. His performance does not leave any doubts, that Platonov is hopeless: his tries to find a way out, his half left love affairs, his intrigues and cruel insults can show in reality the phases of agony.”

The last time Platonov was performed in Nagyvárad in June 2018, the title was Without Father, and the director was Bálint Botos.

István L. Sándor, Ellenfény, 2019

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The dominant tool on the stage is risky, as the main characteristic of a dominant tool on stage is to rule – the game can come after it.

In the Platonov-performance of Maladype Theatre the dominant tool is a billiard table, and the performance starts with Triletsky, who introduces us – shortly and understandably – into the rules jungle of the game. Than short games come with changing partners – the actors are perfectly spontaneous, as the ball is the most autonomous during this evening, it is not obedient at all – then the drama and the performance too can get over the billiard table. In the strictest meaning of the word too.

Zoltán Balázs’ staging started with the dramaturgical “over writing” of Chekov’s first play: with Judit Góczán, the dramaturg, they re-grouped the characters well, they cut and made more complex, in the end nine figures have remained, four women and five men – from the other point of view, Platonov, the main character is surrounded by four women and four men. The dramaturgical work, from the point of view of construction is convincing, from the point of view of the text, it is less, as it remains a little bit more confused: some characteristics, tiny moments cannot be connected anyway to the given character.

Platonov by Zoltán Balázs is almost the story of youngsters; Ákos Orosz in the main role is a stressed “familiar from somewhere” modern figure, a boy from the neighbour, whose socialising education has stopped somewhere, somehow, so he is a little bit strange. And then when he appears in the so called, central place – it can be on a billiard table, or a house of a pub or a general’s wife’s house too – where the usual group has not met for a while, or he has not visited them for a while, then something happened. The gossip news and the international literature are full of these kinds of stories.

The side characters of the drama are put into the two Vengerovich figures: the father and his son line up next to the main character. The older Vengerovich, the owner – Zsolt Páll represents it first shyly than more definitively this: he owns everything here, all the balls on the billiard table and even the light bulbs over it, and even the general’s wife’s nice dress too. His son, Isaac is coming for a visit from abroad to get some money from his father; their stormy relationship can express well the modern relationship of parents and children from the classical generation’s rebel until the once existed and again actual cosmopolitan nature. Isaac – according to Zénó Faragó’s performance is a little bit too violent – he can be worthy opponent to Platonov according to Zoltán Balázs’ interpretation, he can show a useful alternative against laziness, but he does not do it anyway.
Chekov’s characters have started with such hopes and become something else – so it is the dichotomy of illusion and reality: it can be the so called summery of Platonov (too). It is a funny summary, if we think it over, that Platonov is twenty-two years old, when he cried for himself, who he was once, and Sofia cannot be more than this, when they have failed their own great restarting, for which anyway the viewers would pay even a coin.

And not only because of the fact that the other women, who are circling around Platonov, can confuse the desires, but because in Platonov there is not any decision to start somehow again. According to Zoltán Balázs’ resigned interpretation, it is not about any kind of self-sufficiency, when Platonov is speaking and dreaming about the travelling with Sofia, it is only simple excuse for the general’s wife, who also tries to get him. Who anyway – according to Judit Kovács Ligeti’s little bit thin performance – can offer him a more comfortable alternative, a nice and irresponsible affair. But Platonov is not the loot for women - but for himself.

The billiard table and the very contemporary, but anyway reduced dimension of interpretation is getting the tension out of the play. From the scenes, which are composed around the performance, the fight gets lost, the bet of fighting against one another, and only the tension of the colliding of the balls and the moderate excitement of their symbolic meaning, which can be used in wider and narrower sense, can remain. They can push the balls like fireworks, they throw them to one another as followers of a fight with words, or they use them as properties – these situations can question with a good possibility the topic of fantasy and technique.

The first part is very long, but in a subjective way: it is not being built, it does not become higher or deeper, but like a picture of life, widens horizontally. The dynamic of the second part is stronger, however its form is modest, as Platonov’s suicide turns into a ceremony, and it can become very regrettable rather than tragic. There are many ideas, many theatrical gag can be circle around it, which can say anyway that here everybody is Platonov a little bit (understand it well: everybody has their own problem) but nothing else.

The actors (Kamilla Fátyol as Sofia, Vica Kerekes in the role of Grekova, Erika Tankó’s Sasha, Ádám Tompa’s Triletsky, Zoltán Lendváczky’s Voynitsev) can understand well and fulfil with all their knowledge Zoltán Balázs’ staging ideas. Ákos Orosz’s performance as Platonov can be seen as a real alter ego of the director, in the performance, which is not perfect, earth-shattering but it has effects, and makes us thinking it over.

Judit Csáki, Magyar Narancs, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Who wants to put on stage Chekhov’s first (which appeared after his death) play, the Platonov, those had to start the work with the formation of the text version, as it is very rampant, and the original version of the play with its 200 printed pages is hard to perform. Maladype Theatre has come up with a characteristic version of the text, to which Zoltán Balázs’s staging has connected a defined theatrical form.

The version of Maladype (dramaturg: Judit Góczán) has formed Platonov into a chamber version in reality. In the original text there are twenty characters by names (and many characters without names) from it, with different connections and groupings of roles the creators of the performance of Maladype, can open nine figures’ story. (With it they follow Chekov’s creating method, for example Chekov himself formed the rampant action of The Elf and its tabloid like cast into a complicated structure of relations of the six main characters – and of three side characters.

The performance of Maladype puts into brackets the determining problem of the generation of the original text by Chekov. Above it, they make a performance of generation from it. This Platonov is mostly about youngsters, and about the world of those, who are not thirty. (The main character, for example, is said to be 25, while Chekov’s here is “over” 27.) In Chekov’s text the generation of fathers is there too, however in the performance of Maladype there is only one character, who is over thirty. He is Vengerovich (Zsolt Páll), who melts into himself more older Chekov figures (mostly Glagoljev). Only in casa of his son, the younger Vengerovich (Zénó Faragó) I can feel some kind of confusion in case of the text version of Maladype, who is made from three figures, from younger Vengerovich, the younger Glagoljev and Osip, who has stolen horses. As the different figures’ different motivations have not been formed into a motivation, which comes from one another. (For example, the younger Glagoljev confesses his love to Anna Petrovna to annoy his father. However, Osip runs after the woman with unappealable and irreplaceable enthusiasm. He threatens Platonov deadly because of jealousy. The younger Vengerovich simply looks him down on, because according to him in the fact that Platonov always provokes his father, only the failure of his own life can be seen well.)

In this young “drama”, which is rules mostly by characters under the age of 30, obviously love will be the main character, the confusion of feelings, the chaos of desires and choices, which can fill love with restlessness and unpredictability.

István L. Sándor, Ellenfény, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

It is Chekhov’s play from his young age – as it is said – almost all of its lines can be found in his later, more mature plays, as all big constructions of words, it cannot be dealt without a definite “interpretation” by the director. Zoltán Balázs and Júdit Góczán cut the great amount of dialogues not by bones, however by “muscles”. That way as a tight cradle of cat, the story works from scenes to scenes as the well-known game of „putting off”. We can meet Platonov as the teacher in the village, who has started to fall down, but before he was young educated man, who wanted more, who did not refuse anybody’s desire, who admired beauty, goodness, youth. There are four men and four women around him, they “attract and disgust each other”, they are unknotting the tangles of games of power and feelings.

All the games, which are in the play (chess, card and so on) and all the playing are condensed around a billiard table. Everything and everybody appear there, the cue and the chalk mark the momentary stage of the game. A mouth organ can be heard as the pouring of the wine, and the playing table shining in pearly yellowish colour in the darkness of the room theatre can become a bed, fence, and the bare ground itself too later on. The “pushing” of the light, colourful balls (János Csere Apáczai used this word to express the movement of the planets) can rhyme back and forth to the movements of bodies, which are hit back and forth in the space. Judit Kovács Ligeti, Kamilla Fátyol, Vica Kerekes and Erika Tankó are the female characters of the story, they are circling around as moons that cannot get away of the attraction of the central star, of Ákos Orosz’ Sun, which will collapse finally, around Platonov, who rivals with the men, and keeps everybody in hateful excitement. Zsolt Páll’s face, who performs the rejected merchant is unforgettable, Ádám Tompa is sensual, he is charming and devilish at the same time, the young doctor by Zoltán Lendváczky is exciting and fallible, he is the cheated husband. Zénó Faragó performs the troublemaker cosmopolitan, who is formed by the connection of roles, makes us remember a figure by Dostoevsky.

The fine spider net of the billiard game, which forces almost continuous improvisation, always remains there, moreover, it can work, it is similar to a secondary happening under the net of the real happenings. The turning points of the play peak in composition of statues, which are composed strongly and freely, and can be walked around, it grows up here and there in the space, which can be walked around of all of its four sides. These forms, made of human bodies, are so plastic, as Robin would work into the director’s dynamic space-formation practice, who designed the movements.

It is worth and very necessary to take care of all impulses. The twenty minutes before the closure can be ten too, anyway – in the three hours long version, which I saw – this passionate performance, which is very artistic, full of sheer power can be followed all through it.

I do not think that we should take, those youngsters to this performance, who has never been there, however it can be tried too. For the students of the artistic schools, above the age of 15 I would definitely recommend the watching of the performance. They can find something to learn.

Katalin Gabnai, Mindenki Színháza, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

When Matilda sings her heart out in a cabaret, her musical mastery is formidable. Her seductive and wide-ranged voice can do things that most singers cannot even approach. But when she takes off her wig and costume and goes home, she’s just somebody’s wife.

The world premiere of the musical version of a short story, “The Suit,” written by South African author Can Themba in the 1950s, was presented as the opening event of the Louis Armstrong International Jazz Festival, held in Bánk (northeast of Vác). This contemporary jazz-opera, a collaboration between Maladype Theatre and the METTRIN Arts Center in Bánk’s lakeside resort, opened June 26-28 (and continues in late August) performed by an exceptional group of Hungarian singing actors and musicians.

“The Suit” is considered a gem of South African literature which has been translated into several languages and adapted in various forms over several decades in different countries. The story is set in Sophiatown, a neighborhood that was destroyed in the apartheid regime of the 1950s. The script’s present adaptation as a musical cabaret was inspired by Ethiopian Mothobi Mutloatse and Barney Simon, with direction by Zoltán Balázs, and musical score by Adrián Kovács. They re-created the character of Matilda as a cabaret singer, instead of Themba’s version of a silent and mistreated wife who is at the mercy of her punishing and self-centered husband, Philemon. The opera’s title refers to the suit of Matilda’s secret lover, who accidentally leaves it in her bedroom — later discovered by Philemon.

Balázs’ staging, on a small proscenium space crowded with props, furniture, and a five-man band, dramatically emphasizes the psychological prison that Matilda lives in. Her husband’s jealousy and control of her behavior match exactly how women have been treated throughout centuries, and how women have long been entrained to acquiesce to this powerless position. Her entrapment was further accentuated by two giant skeleton-like structures with enormous rib cages. At the end, Matilda encloses herself in it like a caged animal, reminding me of the similar ribbed enclosures in the torture chamber of the notorious palace of serial killer Elizabeth Báthory. Balázs’ skillful direction and Mátyás Lakatos’ semi-sinister lighting created an atmosphere akin to a noir film: the deliberately slow eye contact and reactions of each player to each other functioned as a mechanism of mystery throughout.

Mutloatse, in a post-performance chat with the audience, said: “This play is about freedom and oppression, love and hatred, and envy and empathy.” Mutloatse’s own life experience plays a hidden role too: “My mother was a good tap dancer who was forbidden to follow her artistic path in life and she also made the mistake of seeing another man. So, this is the first time the story doesn’t just revolve around the husband, but it turns itself inside out. My mother was the echo of Matilda.”

Mutloatse expressed his great joy in discovering the actress Csilla Radnay, whose performance of Matilda was “spectacular, and she’s absolutely the perfect actress to inhabit this character. I’ve been waiting years for this to happen!” Radnay is extraordinary: she has an astonishing vocal range, perfect pitch, exquisite control of several styles of music, and combined with highly proficient acting skills, she captured rapt attention. Philemon, played by Barna Bányai Kelemen, sang the role with assurance, though he seemed to suppress the villainous quality of the cuckolded husband’s vitriol expressed in the original story, in favor of competing with her charisma. In the role of K.K. the mysterious lover, Ferenc Fehér’s nimble dancer’s body did a lot of physical magic, twisting himself into a pretzel or somehow climbing around the set like a snake in his suit designed by Daniella Sovány. (In fact, several of the costumes she designed for this show were eye-catchingly colorful African styles.)

Composer Kovács’ score blends Afro-jazz rhythms of marabi, mbaganga, and kwela with European and Hungarian sounds, which accompany the actors’ thoughts and feelings. In two sections, Kovács includes Bach-like scoring that suggests a church-like atmosphere when Matilda decides to participate in a spiritual community. The orchestration consists of piano, guitar, sax, flute, bass, percussion and drums, and these top-tier musicians executed this non-stop, hour-plus performance with admirable skill.

The performance was framed with a recording of three women singing a popular Zulu song in three-part harmony, which easily slid us into the jazz-based score which not only set the stage as a sophisticated night club, but paid close attention to the actors’ texts and emotional conditions. As an added surprise treasure for non-Hungarian speakers, the cast delivered this gem in perfect English.

The company will perform “The Suit” in Budapest on August 29.

Alexandra Ivanoff, Papageno, 2026

Homer, Sándor Márai (Peace in Ithaca, and from Monteverdy’s baroque opera, from the Return of Ulysses), the guest, Zoltán Balázs has made a chamber performance from these in Temesvár, in the Gergely Csiky Governmental Hungarian Theatre. The troupe from clever devotedly well-ordered youngsters with vivid looks, can walk familiarly in and out of the heroic poem and from the roles of its frivolous story.

Ulysses takes place in the Trojan war, however he unwillingly does it. Ithaca clever king, who has finished his armour things is about to go home to his wife. But he does not try to do it very much. Ulysses is brave. He is well educated. He is clever. He is tricky. His trick is the sneaked in wooden horse. He is wondering for ten years. Or for twenty. Some-where his way to home lasts for forty years. The Gods make him leave his way to home. Or his interest does. Or his adventurous nature does. However, his undying desire to unite his family does not make him do everything to arrive home.

His faithful wife is waiting doing handicraft for the crowed of suitors, who ruin the property. She refuses her violent suitors (Attila Kiss, Géza Asztalos, Csaba András Molnos). She is faithful to her husband, who is late, the king, who is always dissuaded from his way to home, lives through tale-like adventures, many women have caught him, until he gets home old. Solveig is spinning and waiting for him faithfully, while her Peer Gynt is looking for himself in the laps of strange women. Solveig, so Penelope is waiting for him and getting pale. However, the queen in Temesvár (the wonderful Erika Tankó) is sitting on a throne all through the performance. She can understand from above her situation with sceptic calmness. Not without any irony she comments on her fate connected to the same place.

Attila Balázs is a soldier Ulysses in silver armour. He steps of his statue-like podium, and however, he accepts the temptation of highness, he performs a retired mythological hero. He remains the leading drive of the actions to his son, Telemachus. Zénó Faragó follows his father’s wondering adventures. The modern, young man would like to know surely the truth between the lies, mythological tales, fake stories of war. He wants to know: if it was meaningful to wait for in sacrificing way for such a long time to the fabulous idol, could he bring salvation to their everyday life? Zénó Faragó gets memories, the viewers’ attention and the reign over the stage with growing drive. His meeting with nymph Calypso (with Andrea Tokai, who has powerful talent and magical diction) is the most captivating theatrical moment of the performance. We are not in island of Ógügié. Nor in Odyssey. The place is Temesvár, the Gergely Csiky Theatre in the old ballet hall in the Gyulafehérvár Street (str. Alba Iulia). The time is today. Two passionate modern people are on the theatrical stage.

The playfully ironic Ágota Szilágyi, as Pallas Athena who plays naughty tricks with humans. Circe: Etelka Magyari, Nausicaa: Rita Lőrincz, Euryclea: Katalin Anikó Páll. The swineherd, who helps kill the suitors, is Zsolt András Bandi. All of them move with plastic utility in the pool by ankles (according to András Szőllősi’s training). They wear and use Velica Panduru’s set royally and her costumes, with rich imagination and material. They synchronize misleading the Italian opera performance, which has been made from two Monteverdi records. Their synchronic work is excellent, because they themselves can sing wonderfully.

The pair of Fellner&Hellmer, who planned the Monarchy full with theatres, in the front of the József Ferenc Theatre about a century ago built in the cubistic concrete Dial, which refers to the Romanian plain Dial of the Duiliu Marcu, and he ruined that way the entrance of the theatre from 1875. To make its history back was prevented by history. The cultic background of the revolution in Temesvár was the building of theatre. Duo to reasons of bereavement it is untouchable. The original Fellner&Hellmer cannot be got from under it.

The youngsters of the theatre, named after Gergely Csiky, can run a dedicated contemporary theatre.

Péter Gál Molnár, Nol.hu, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

2. Mikszáth Square. The first floor. The Maladype Theatre has formed their base in the flat at the end of the corridor. Here in the corner of a spacious room, they perform Alfred Jarry play, which is to annoy the viewers, his provocative wildness of students. Who would be shocked by the famous first word of the drama – with Zoltán Jékely’s invention: “shit” – from which such a confusion started in Paris in 1896, as 66 years before. when in Hugo’s poetic drama, in the Hernani everybody was shocked by the fact that in an elevated play, in an ordinary street-like way called an “old silly one”, one of the Spanish cartoon heroes. The fighting noise of Hernani is caused by the first line, Hugo went against the rules, and ion the second line he broke the cesura of the alexandrine. He did not follow the rules, the sense, when he made recite the “stairs of a hidden way”.

Ubu was made in a group in the lyceum of Rennes. They figured out angrily their overweight physics teacher with their collected ideas. Jarry and Henri Morin wrote the marionette play, with the help of the older Charles Morin. They performed it in Morins’ attic in 1888, with the title of The Polish. Jarry later appropriated the student trick. He made Ubu individual, he is the coward tyrant, he is the ordinary civilian, who is put between Shakespeare- and Victor Hugo-like didactic scandals.

We do not have to mention all hardships of Jarry’s drama parody. First it was performed Hungarian on the practicing Ódry stage of the theatre art university, in the title role, with the diabolic György Linka and János Bruck directed it (1967). It was swept away by censorship. The director student ends up in London. Béla Éles in Tatabánya together with amateurs, worked it over well, under György Aczél’s protective arms in Pécs he was followed by István Paál in 1987, then Zsámbéki made success of it in Katona in 1984. It was always a political rebellious act against the monotonous made order of performance and ordered common-taste. The opening word of “shit” is calm. It is settled. It is a common treasure of common speech. It does not shock us. It slides by the ears.

There is no scandal. The viewers do not whistle. The viewers’ aesthetic scandal is put off. It is not disturbed by rudeness. The subversive drama-like things calm down into a nice theatrical lamb by Zoltán Balázs’ hands. They do not tease the viewers in order to make them “active”. In contrast to it: the horrifying drama has become an enchanting performance.

After the rude words to the viewers have calmed down, in Jarry remain as much aesthetic widening of viewers, it worth comparing to the 110 hundred years old play, which goes on with naturalistic tools and teases the taste.

It was noted, that when Jarry pushed his finger into the important tragic writer’s hand of the Comédie, he opened his partner as a key, as he was a door, on the premiere Antoine stood up offensively, the god of soil smelled naturalism, and he left the performance in a protesting way.

Ubu on Mikszáth Square is not a political freedom. It is nor the partisan activity against the canonical aesthetic. The informal imagination, the artistic convincing power and the throne reign of the playfulness, which gets rid of its chains.

Four men perform it. Ákos Orosz alone is Papa Ubu, the greedy civilian monster. He does not wear fake stomach. He performed with his own, half naked. With his freely flying fat, with fatty cushions, which are ready to get free. But the form of his eyes, under his half closed lids, looks his dirty attention, with determined coward malice he can stand in for something familiar, something, which is closer to our present days, than to Macbeth by Shakespeare, for Boggerlas’ role Jarry caught a thirteen years old beautiful young boy, with long hair. The figure is performed by Zsolt Páll, together with other eight roles. Sometimes in his mouth we can see frightening false teeth. The others steal sometimes dental-fillers into their mouth to change their face. Captain Bordure and together with other eight separated roles Ádám Tompa shines till the end, who is muscular enlightened from inside. He stole a moustache under his nose. Like light butterflies they are flying with their wings and they express determination, fear, pity heroism under his nose. They live through the childish joke of clowns with shameless seriousness. They are honest, as the school of Rennes before are. They enchant the viewers with easy elegance of artists, with all those things, which professional actors would never do. Zoltán Lendváczky in the transvestite role of Mama Ubu, can put from right and left his black corset under in armpit with a sharp movement. After it he does not want to be womanish neither with thinned voice nor with the fixing of his unrealistic breast. He looks with innocent flirtation, as an ideal Ophelia.

They avoid all artistic traditional clichés. They are childishly happy. And they are entertaining too.

In the corner of the hall there are connected piles of newspapers. There are risen gradually. They are walking on it. There is a deep hole in the middle. Papa Ubu is standing in it. From the newspapers of today they tear down properties for themselves, they eat them as veal meat, they stuffed them down on their throat. The really old newspapers put the theatrical happenings into political connection. They are fighting with wooden sticks. They fixed the properties on their head by tapes. Or they fix the armour sings on one another by glues. Kamilla Fátyol designed the set and the costumes, which are similar to school sport-uniforms. It works with braves imagination than the usual ones.

“Jarry dressed as a clown of circus, everything was affected; mostly his mood of speech, which the Argonauts imitated like on a competition; they divided the phrases sharply, they found out grotesque words, they transformed other expressions, but only Jarry could speak with such a colourless, powerless, stress-less, expressionless voice” - André Gide said it: in his novel of The counterfeiters (Pál Réz translation).

Péter Gál Molnár, Nol.hu, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Jarry and his mates, the once naughty ones of the Secondary Grammar School in Rennes, some four centuries ago they performed together their puppet comedy about Mr. Hébert, physics teacher, who they hated violently in an attic, which they created together. Later Jarry grabbed the opus, he “wrote” it, and he let free the bad quality, coward, dictator figure in the picture of King Ubu. During the performances, scandals came after scandals, and it could not be only because of the linguistic, but because of the situations, which could be always confused with figures and concrete political situations too. For the performance of Maladype we do not have to go up to the attic just to the flat on the first floor in the eighth district, but here the hell can exhale well during the furiously fast performance.

From outside we can think that here teenagers, who stay together after school go wild in a room, on the hill of packages of newspapers. In the side of the climbable pile of papers there is a hole, in it, Ákos Orosz’s Ubu wallows and rages like a pig in a hole, above him Zoltán Lendváczky as Mama Ubu or as a bear, walks and slides, while the other two boys – according to the programme too – perform at least eight different characters, only with the tools, which can be connected to the world of papers – with scissors, glues, wooden sticks, stapler and strings – and with the help of the flying pieces of newspapers too. Those papers, which the actors do not tear up, do not eat up, they suddenly put in front of them, read them up, and the figures of national gossip news suddenly move in the audience. Ákos Orosz’s Ubu is a real creature of hell, but this sly figure, who jumps up from the mud, is not unfamiliar on the pavements of eighth district too.

From this play can be formed a prediction of the end of the world, demonic caricature, and murderous and dark satire too, there have been example for it, and hopefully there will be some. We can very rarely enjoy this kind of free magic with enchanting rhythm, this kind of punctually composed ballet fighting of the creative madness, as Zoltán Balázs’ present performance is.

I remember Ottó Orbán’s lines, from his poem, which sings about the later tired genius of the sixties: “who were the fresh air and the sun explosion of the talent” – he wrote about them. Here it is the present, the theatre of contemporary time. These youngsters are the fresh air now, their Ubu performance is the “sun explosion of the talent”.

Katalin Gabnai, Mindenki Színháza, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)