They warn us nicely in the hall to switch off our mobile phone there, and then take our seat inside as quietly as we can, because the performance is already going on at the moment of the opening of the doors. As we are entering the mysterious, reddish dusk, between the „whispers and screams”, we become incompetent watchers, who have got into the middle of a ceremony by accident (remember The school for fools performance by Maladpye). We do not know this religion, this rite, we are not involved in. Many times there is a thick – sometimes a disturbingly translucent, sometimes it is not at all – glass wall between the actors and the audience. It is not similar to the wall, which is sometimes there in theatre on the thin borderline between the stage and the auditorium. In those theatres after a while the tension is eased, the wall disappears; everything which happens in the performance „seems like happening with us too”. Here and now it does not. It is impossible to identify with the barbarian rhythmical melodic speech which is told backwards and the monotonous chanting (or maybe because of it?) of the red dressed priests’ of ancient religion and pagan rites. We are outsiders, who have forgotten and have not learnt (again) yet this language. It is natural that we cannot always understand everything – or it is not necessary, is it?

It is connected to the question: how does this theatre want to effect us? To say banally: on our emotions or senses? On both of them or neither of them, the truth is somewhere in the middle. This is mostly the night of our instincts which are sleeping inside, the night of qualities which can be understood by sense organs (so hardly told by words). Sándor Weöres is hard in his simplicity, his wonderful, poetic text, hard words are repeated many times one another, they fall again and again into the cold silence of the cosmos. Inarticulate ancient feelings are swirling around us in the Fencing Hall of Bárka Theatre. It is also a „Battle of Worlds”: we can see, hear and feel the birth of a new world, the destruction of the old one, its fall into the darkness, from where the earlier one has come. The wondering attention is restricted, there is not any escape from Kronos’ power, which fills all corner of the place. It would drown and eat us, the audience too, as he would do with his children if the liberating ending did not arrive, where the collected, great tension can flare up like a small flame for people of the new era, in the Boy’s / Zeus’ (Kristóf Horváth) hand and covers his young, almost nude body with ash.

Kronos’ (Ilona Béres) presence is obvious, she is standing motionless and unmoveable in the middle of the universe (which only has its contours); she barely opens her paper-thin mouth to give her short, cruel (harmfully for the vocal cords too) commands. Strong black lines divide her grey-white face, her messy hair is long and black. We can meet Kronos in his full power, but he will lose it soon. He has already eaten three of his daughters and two of his sons, because of his fear that any of them would take his power, as he did it before with his father, Uranos. This fear is the only feeling that leads all of his actions and thoughts. That is why he cannot become an unlimited ruler: Kronos is morbidly afraid of the fulfilment of the Moiras’ unavoidable prophecy.

This basic fear became well-established when his wife, Rhea turned against him, and secretly had her youngest child brought up in the isle of Crete, and served her husband a stone instead of the baby Zeus. Andrea Spolarics as Rhea is perfect opposition of her cold and insensitive husband: she is full of blazing, passion and vibrant vitality. Her motherhood is above everything: as we have mentioned at the beginning of the performance with its strange mood becomes full, that during the priests ceremony, who are repeating Kronos’ name, on the net, which is stretched out between the two half of the auditorium, Rhea gives a birth to a child, who the servants put immediately on Kronos’ table. Kronos’ brother Okeanos helps Rhea to get rid of her bloodthirsty husband: Rémusz Szikszai on his firm voice gives advice to the mother, he cannot be stopped by Rhea’s fear of her husband’s revenge. Okeanos believes of course not in his own plan, but in the power, independent of him, he believes in fate.

There are things in the world (on stage) which can work independently of Kronos (and anyone else too) – the veiled woman creature – like a Magritte painting – with a bird-cage on her head is one of them, as she is walking up and down on a tall spiral staircase all through the performance. Who is she? Maybe as we see the strange creature, the most obvious one is to associate to The Time, that is indifferent with the fate of any creatures. The time is an important part of this performance anyway: it is well known that in ancient times, Kronos was identified with the „Father of Time”, partly because that according to Homer „the sharp-witted” god consumed both his past (his ancestor, Uranos) and his future (his successors, among the others, Zeus too). The giant wheel behind Kronos / Ilona Béres, than its „dislocation” on the top of the actions, and its breaking up can be connected to time, to the beginning of a new era. Or maybe this appearance on the stairs represents the three Moiras’ ominous power, which is always hidden there behind the nice surface? The grim goddesses of fate are mentioned many times on the stage, but they never appear in their body in front of us – the veiled creature could warn us as a silent exclamation mark to our common fate.

It can be a too didactic lesson, but anyway: the basic topic of the play is about the fight between the old and new, barbarian and civilized, or even the pagan and the Christian (we can go on with it), and about the winning of the later one (this topic was interesting in ancient times too, think about The Maenads by Euripides or The Persian by Aeschylus). It is a cliché that the base of the European Civilization was built by the Christian – Jewish culture and the Greek – Roman world. Weöres „oratorio drama” from 1938 shows us fateful moments during this process: we can become the witnesses of the first „change of paradigm”. However Kronos got rid of his father, Uranos, as Zeus would do it with him, but with the fact that Kronos got on the throne, nothing has changed yet. The pantheon on Mount Olympus will be formed just after the strengthen of Zeus’ power, so he is the "homo novus", by the winning of whom our world can born from chaos.

Zoltán Balázs’ considered direction faces up with these listed problems – but we cannot get calming solutions everywhere. We do not have to be in close relationship with Sándor Weöres’ poetic texts to recognise the very important role of sounding in his works, and of the feelings, which are generated – recalled by him, and of the impressions. The staging is based on this recognition and uses ancient methods for the ancient topic, in that way it reaches (word) magic and towards the ritual theatre (which is spreading nowadays). The words get their own life at the moment of their articulation, their repetition, varying, sounding backwards or the breaking up of the sentences into their elements opens new dimensions for the audience (that is why we can hear the poet’s other works too, like the Drum and dance). The musicality of Weöres’ texts are strengthened more by the important role of percussion instruments (Kornél Mogyoró) and the singing voice, which is sometimes from unearthly regions (Zoltán Gavodi).

The almost two and a half hour long performance, without any intervals builds up the story following this way and tries to form the most varied techniques into an organic whole. That is how the Hungarian folk song like singing can be next to the „baroque” countertenor aria; the ancient Greek topic and some outside elements of the eastern, static staging (so both the organisation of the set and the costumes can be thanked for Judit Gombár’s work); Weöres’ texts which he dedicated to Babits and the new-old-like magic poetry which is born from it and by it.

It is compulsory to watch Zoltán Balázs’ staging in the Fencing hall of the Bárka Theatre. It is not the best performance of the season, but for sure even with its inconsistency, we have to consider it as one of the most exciting and poetical try. It is good to be considered as the next step of the director’s path-finding; it is not a complete work, but it is full of references forward (hopefully) and (to the earlier ones – The School for Fools, Jack, or the Submission) backward, and a mental construction thanks to a lot of hard work.

Tamás Jászay, Criticai Lapok, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)