That carefulness with which Zoltán Balázs, the director shows us to our seat is conspicuous and he does it one by one in the narrow amphitheatre of the Bárka Theatre. The writer as a white one, wrote his play-ceremony to the whites, which, according to the original instructions, has to be played by black actors.

The ceremony in reality is a grotesque, distracting operation: while we, the viewers are watching the replayed ritual of a white woman’s killing by the fake white ones (in reality they are just wearing white masks), by the court, then the fake lawsuit, by the sentence of the killer, besides the set the real revolution has started. Until we get there the world has turned a lot with us. In Genet’s glass maze we can never be sure that who is the real victim, whether we see the ancient original story or the invoking rite. While we are listening to the writer baroque-like prolific poetic text we can suddenly lose all the Archimedean points, which can be some help to us: as in front of the two mirrors opposite to each other, the only thing which would be missing is the subject of reflection, everything is affected, everything is played and everything is virtual.

Balázs has composed a classical, precise score: the geometrical system which follows all elements of the play can perfectly counterbalance the poetic “overreaches” of the text. On this rich scale which the chronicler cannot express the actors can play easily. Which is the most conspicuous for the first sight is that: in the holes of the amphitheatre we can see the picture of members of the “white” and “black” group opposite to each other. (The whites: Kamilla Fátyol, Rodrigó Balog, Kristóf Horváth, János Balog, Zoltán Oláh; the blacks: Balázs Dévai, Nóra Parti, Judit Réka Kiss, Erzsébet Soltész, Éva Bakos), their identity is signed only by the colour of their clothes (the fashion of the clothes, the fan in their hand, the movements from flamenco, especially on the side of the blacks raise Spanish allusion).

Opposite to the original instructions given by writer, here in the non-homogeneous Maladype group the Gypsies play the whites, while in the black dresses are the non-Gypsy members of the group. Meanwhile it is not enough too: all actors of each group are synchronized by opera singers, who are presented in the area and dressed like monks (the music which can be called a capella opera was composed by László Sáry who is Zoltán Balázs’ permanent partner). Their number is the half of the actors’ that is why a singer of a sound can give singing voice for two characters at the same time. (Beatrix Fodor, soprano, Apollónia Szolnoki, alto, Zoltán Gavodi, countertenor, László Böröcz, tenor, Szabolcs Hámori, bass).

The tools for the actors are their punctually created movements and the mute but even more expressive articulation of the text. People feel that the sounds given by the singers would become the acoustic masks (“roles”?) of the moving characters. That is why the sentences, which the actors tell in prose on their own voices, become so strong: through these the real personalities losing their masks can “be sounded” from time to time. (It is very characteristic that Balázs Dévai, who plays the Village and tends to do the killing, confesses his love to Nóra Parti, who plays the Virtue, and gets naked physically. It is even more painful when turns out that it is only a cheat, so that the audience can find out the appearing real feelings of future fulfiller.)

The fact that the actors and singers tell the text as others’ mirror images – we do not know for sure who are the leaders – gives us the opportunity for a real new interpretation: between the two opponent groups music is like a mediator (for the same sounding the characters are connected in pairs): and the appearance, the vision can cheat us, as the white and black figures, at least, acoustically are mixed. This mixture is widened as the director gives the role of Archibald, of the Master of Ceremonies to himself: he tells leanly the instructions into a microphone to the players, while he is sitting there between us in his ordinary clothes. His presence with his pure voice connects him to the acoustic part, but to the players too, but his appearance makes him similar to us: his figure has double meaning, (mediator and shaman) with his help the stage and the auditorium can form a world together (in a circular area where the players and viewers can melt into each other on the level of vision too).

Balázs merges the role of the sacrificing and victim which is a braver action than it is, so he gives meaning to the mixture on the level of the dramaturgy too: Hermina Fátyol and Artúr Kálid are changing the roles of the city of Saint Nazare and the role of Diuf, and their positions in the area. In the middle of the arena, on the top of the box of the victim we can see the girl for a long time, while the man is going around on the highest floor of the amphitheatre, above us. Then at the peak of the performance, during the rite of the victim, we can see Artúr Kálid in the middle, he is dancing like a female victim dressed in red (his dancing, movements, red dress quote the bullfighter and the bull at the same time), than the girl in concerto is rising up into the air and looks down to us from the point of view of the gods. Sándor Weöres’ lines from the Third symphony come into my mind: “You are the hunter and you are the wild one...”.

There we can understand that Balázs thinks over and makes universal Genet’s message: in the two scales of the balance there are not the whites and the blacks, the oppressors and the oppressed – the performance (as in the case of the director’s earlier work, in the Theomachia) reveals the manipulation which keeps itself by tricky takeovers, which laugh behind the empty duality of our days. They are measured and found to be too light according to the scale, from the point of view of the divine optic. And we are measured too: “you are all pink”, said Diuf, Hermina Fátyol on her naïve, childish voice in the clothes of a nun. Another question again: what is going to remain at the end of the two hours long insanity of virtualities that put out each other. Who are going to remain?

The running pair of the more than two hours long performance, the teenager Village and the Virtue have reached their destination, above the victim they push their foreheads to one another and confess pantingly their love to each other. The blonde girl and the Gypsy boy. Maybe they will step out of the constant whirl of the mix(tures). They give meaning to the mirrors too.

Gábor Pap, Kritika, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)