I have no doubts that many people will put off the watching of Theomachia in the Bárka Theatre because of those complicated and deep explanations by which my expert colleagues try to make the theatregoers to watch it. I tell that: it is not a light performance, it is better to give us to it from the first minute of it.

Better to accept that: it is what we can hear and see, and it means which comes into our mind first. Zoltán Balázs tried to solve the impossible task – to put on stage Weöres’ oratorio drama, which as written half a decade ago, is a poem instead – because he wanted to tell us, what Kronos, the young titan, could do. Who, as we know it, at any cost, wanted to keep his power. That is why he goes against the divine prediction – according to which his own son will take it from him -, and eats all his children, until the baby Zeus is saved from his father by his mother, and the others – for example by Kronos’ mother too – and he is fed by a stone instead of the child. But there is bread too. Do not turn towards the obvious message, according to which who wants the power too much will fall because of it – the performance is not about it.

It is about the fact that the more than simple resume will get an intensive theatrical form in the great hall of the Bárka Theatre, about which I have felt for the first time to be deserving its name: it is a real fencing hall, and we are sitting on it longer side, next to the field. There is field too, what else can be those narrow, beam lights, which go against each other, getting bigger and smaller, while on their ending points two characters, Andrea Spolarics as Rhea and Rémusz Szikszai as Okeanos, with eastern-like dancing steps and intonation save the future.

There are big red veils too; they are rolling up and falling down. The Choir is in front of and behind, or the Curates as they move us on together with the story, and they give that mythological-mysterious tone which symbolises the best this ceremonial theatre. They bring their character by dancing, singing, chanting and posture: they play everywhere, in horizontal and vertical order too – Judit Gombár impressive set can enchant the audience not only in its complexity, but it makes them think through its elements too. The terrifying, giant wheel behind the motionless Kronos will break up at the end of the play, its two parts turn into a horizontal, and on it everybody will find shelter, who remain for the future. We can say, that this is the Earth. In front of it there is a net, the place of birth: but there is a corridor above, a spiral staircase on which somebody is continuously going up and down, like a liturgy in himself, a prayer wheel or the time itself; and there is the drop too: there the little Zeus can be saved.

Kronos is standing on the geometric or dramatic mean of the space and performance, in a giant, black robe, because he is an enormous god, motionless, a strong and tragic character. Ilona Béres is standing motionlessly all through the two and half hours, this is a strong dramatic element in its own, her performance has a “mobile” part too: Kronos’ sharp, deep voice is frightening, destroying. When he gets destroyed in the end – he is so self-conscious, he is just the power, the tyrant power only, that when it disappears, he disappears too with it - , the fragile actress comes from him, who has been the posture, the weight herself to be able to go up in a shirt and tell the last poem together with the others.

Béres performance is impressively humble. In minimal artistic space, she shows strength and frightening power in a way that she can turn into fall and self-destruction in the end. When Kronos tear his black hair with slow movements, he is dead at the same time: this is the language of Zoltán Balázs’ troupe. With symbols and pictures, with music and dance, with lightness and darkness. Gabriella Varga, Erzsébet Soltész and nearly everybody can speak this language perfectly, in which there is folk dance with stick, head voice, raised gestures: so everything beyond the usual words and movements, from which there are not many.

The audience can feel from the strange organisation of the space and the wide premier plan: the performers want to make them the part of the story. Moreover, as we are sitting in long lines, everybody has their own special viewpoint, they can choose from the stresses, from which there are many on each corner of the place. The rhythm – the persisted and useful but thick lines of scenes – helps to concentrate our attention: since we do not need to understand each gesture – many time they are simultaneous – staging signs on a traditional way, but we have to get into the emotional-sensual scope of the performance to be able to live through the tragedy of fate together with the characters, with their help. It is all about clichés: we have to become an initiated viewer.

Although there is someone who initiates us. Therefore, it is not hard after all.

Judit Csáki, Magyar Narancs, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)