Drama variations on the stage of Radnóti Theatre and Merlin

Enmity and dissociation. Here is the spirit of our time, if we take into consideration two new works of theatre.

Is it the real spirit of our time? Or they are just projections of it, of which we can not avoid to take notice after all. It is an odious, rank world, so writers must be mean – maybe the young German writer, Marius von Mayenburg thinks so, whose play, the Fireface was put on by the Radnóti Theatre.

Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese forms the state of dissociation into poetry. The play, which was put on in the Merlin Theatre, approached to his work with the idea of total theatre.

Ninety-one scenes in one part, this is the definition of the sequence of Fireface, which adapts the eternal topic of the contrast between children and parents from the point of view of the “mean ones”. The initial state of the play is clear and easy: the teenager siblings hate their parents, who are thought to be empty-headed, detest their life, their lifestyle, everything, which could be value once for the mother and the father, are strange for them. They try to stay down in their closed world, only two of them alone, to live through unwillingly their own drama of growing up by looking and bursting out from there, to look at the world which they are unable to accept and which will not accept them too.

They form their own separate world, and then they find the only acceptable, murderous possibility of the final denial.

The fire can destroy everything. The present, the past and of course the future too. For von Mayenburg’s heroes there may not be future. They were not born for it, they did not live their strange, modest life with bated sigh for it. They do not simply deny the parents’ life, behaviour but their own too.

Marius von Mayenburg’s scene sequence is a tough drama, which was presented in the Radnóti Theatre with Erzsébet Rácz’s accurately sensitive translation. The surrounding of the cruel, bitter game, which comes from the wallpapers of the apparent family idyll, the scenery of the changing scenes, were designed by Maria Ambrus, the characteristic wears were made by Mari Benedek. The director, Sándor Zsótér, creates the order of the game, true to himself. The importance of it is the hate, the aversion, the exact performance of murder, and to push back the performance to its simple level, which is free from affectation and frills, in that way the play can show objectively and thoroughly all of those that were illustrated in the drama by the writer. Zsótér builds his actor leading on simplicity and bare mediation. There are no unnecessary feelings, overacting; only those that can be shown of people, the passion which is Mayerburg’s heroes’ essence.

The actors of Fireface – Tibor Szervét, the dad, Andrea Moldvai Kiss, the mother, Gabi Gubás and the college student, Dániel Dobó the siblings and Gábor Kocsó in the role of Paul- follow precisely their director, who shows the empire of ugliness freely and authentically.

The college student, Zoltán Balázs’s screenplay, which was born from the Portuguese poet’s, Fernando Pessoa’s works, titled: The ancient anxiety, guides us to the world of soul. The stage adapter invites us for an imaginary journey to the broken sense. With his game as he indicates it, he tries, and thanks to his talent, he can fulfil his concept too, to present this barely known, said to be schizophrenic poet’s thoughts, ideas, mood, images about soul and people. To tell all he wants performed with the dramatic language of “comprehensive artwork”.

In the small studio of Merlin Theatre, which accepts the performance, fine arts and music, dance, movement and poetry are expressed simultaneously. All of them are given the same stress, their unity and coexistence give the completeness of the game, in which there are the flow of life, the fear of death, the agitation and the peace, unsettling passion and the calm clarity, the man on his own, on his thoughts, soul.

There is the man as he is watching himself in the mirror, as the light is shining back on his glasses, and on it himself too, as he glimpses himself in his strange shred, thinks that recognises his face, his shape as all those memories are emerging that define his road, his fate.

Following Pessoa, the performance shows the group of the Fire (István Kelemen), of the Sky (Angela Császár), of the Earth (Eszter Vörös),of the Water (Tamás Presits) as the determining elements of the Ego. He words his poetry, the desires, the wishes, the fear of passing away, and the recognition that the end is unavoidable, returning back to the Eternal mother (Katalin Hegedűs Gönczy). Judit Gombár’s set and costumes which are fulfilled in colours and characterised by the expressiveness of nuances, create the enchanting, artistic surrounding and lyrical grotesque mood of the game. András Szőllősi’s choreography with the usage of dance and moving helps to demonstrate on stage the drama of anxiety.

“Everything is theatre” – says Fernando Pessoa and Zoltán Balázs’s hero. He also adds to it: “This is theatre too.” That is true.

Katalin Róna, Magyar Nemzet,1999

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)