Can symbolism be separated from human being, and how can a symbol be naked? The French Pelléas and Mélisande Zoltán Balázs put into an orthodox surrounding in the Bárka Theatre. From Maeterlinck’ symbolist system of signs come the vision of stage with gothic world of forms, where the dark sets, heavy clothes, the ordering in the set, all become the part of the unknown ancient secrets. Balázs’ orthodox area is cold, he shows a masculine world to us, where Mélisande’s loneliness and vacuum become more evident than in the case of French fairy tale. The cruel surrounding ruins the lonely girl, meanwhile Balázs beside the love story, he shows the eternal fight of female and male aspects. The femininity needs space, and when it is over the softness and devotion end too. However Mélisande’s world deserves love and reflects energy of life, but it has no space in an area that turns away life, that is why Balázs’s idea to use Georgian and Armenian approach, as the patriarchal Orthodox culture handles femininity as it is subordinated to manpower.

Two main virtues of the performance are Judit Gombár’s set and costumes and Béla Faragó’s music. The three floors tall monastery is similar to the description of Aladdine and Palomides („and these many shivering arches in winter, the circular corridors that are turning into themselves... There are scales, which do not lead anywhere, and balconies, form where nothing can be seen”) – or we can call it a fortress instead – it is complemented with the forth-floor of the underworld, can be interpreted as the upper ego of Freud, ego or ego of instincts and as the subconscious visual images, as the trial unity of the Sky, the Earth and the human beings, which can get its final meaning with the help of death – the lower floor is the circle of sensual desires, the middle one of the material forms and the upper one belongs to the pure spirit. It is important to mention the symbolic numbers of the windows of the fortress too, as on the first floor of the doormen there are three, on the living space of Mélisande there are nine, on the highest level there are nine arches too. Both numbers are masculine principles in the numerology, in case of Balázs the masculine world is expressive. The number nine fulfils the absolute perfect, it is the number of initiation, but it can be the nine dignity of God too: this is the attribute of the goodness, the greatness, the eternity, the power, the wisdom, the will, the virtue, the truth and the glory. The nine levels of physical, mental and spiritual awareness can be similar to the nine months of pregnancy: during the first three months the mother is wishing for a baby, she has to fight with her ego and accept the strange body which is growing inside her, and her tool-like existence, the next three months are the time of growing, when desire becomes real, during the last three months the new life begins to come off, the connection between the two body is getting dissolved and the leaving happens.

So in the numerology, number nine is connected to the origin and death too. It is not an accident that Pelléas dies on the lower floor, in the ego of instinct, as Mélisande who is from another world in her own room, she dies in the middle of the nine arches. It is surprising that he puts the royal couple on to the top floor, they represent the ego of adulthood, but they are depended on the fate as well as the other characters too. That is why the marionette character of King Arkël (István Erdős) is strange too: if the supernatural power uses all people as puppets, why the old ruler is the only one who gets a puppet alter ego?

The multi-storey showing of levels makes s remember the painting traditions of 1400s, especially the votive painting of the unknown Check master, Jan Očko’s work, in which Maria in blue dress, with her new born baby in her arms, welcomes the three kings surrounded by the adoration of the bishops who are standing on a floor under. Mélisande is floating in the middle the same way, she is closed into the middle of the nine arches, she is similar to Maria on the winged altars, as the icon of the history of her own torture. In the frame scene the Armenian carpet of Mélisande’s window refers to the isolation of harems, in case of which we can have a view into the intimate space only through the holes of the carpet which comes up for a moment, where everything happens as they have not been, the lines of reality and illusion are mixed inextricably.

The other characters are similar to icons, that is why we can usually see only one person in an arch, only Golaud and Mélisande, and Mélisande with her child can get into the same photo, according to the old representation of the Saint Family. The harmony breaks here exactly: the man and the woman are similar to the Saint Family only from outside, but while the earlier one represents the life and happiness beyond the world, the later one embodies the desperation and wish for death.

The geometrical forms are not symbolic everywhere, the stairs to the cave of underworld and the stairs of the separate building do not express any truth of numerology, the doctor – Kristóf Horváth – who watches the happenings from outside can be the angel of death as well as the unknown power that cures wounds forever – incomprehensible but he has no connection with numbers.

The symbols interlace didactically the whole play: the ancient water thrown into darkness is the water of death, the only feminine principle, Mélisande’s figure is also connected to the water, as the vision of birth is connected to water in case of many mythology, and the girl is born of the spring or she is reborn of it. Water is the symbol of chaos, of the disorder before birth, later it becomes the symbol of returning to the chaos after death. Water means the eternal circulation and return, that is why Gabriella Varga can be reborn as Kamilla Fátyol with the help of the spring. The young girl is not the alter ego of the other one, but the manifestation of her earlier and later egos, and she is the adult ego of Mélisande’s baby daughter in the chains of fate without any change.

In the masculine world there is place only for one feminine principle, that is why Queen Geneviéve (Olga Varjú) becomes masculine. If she does not want to lose her life, she has to give her femininity to the next victim. The characters of Golaud (Zoltán Seress) and Pelléas (Artúr Kálid) are changed too, as the drama is not about a love triangle for sure, it can be interpreted as a multi-dimensional game of love, it is symbolic similarly to the Bluebeard’s Castle. The two men can be two aspects of the same ego, the one who wants to own and conquer, and the other one is the power that is tolerant and gives gentle support.

Balázs’ directorial merit is the framed structure, where the circulation is represented by Mélisande’s death and by the birth of her daughter mostly – as Pozzo’s words appear here from Beckett’s play, from Waiting for Godot: “the women give birth above the graves, in riding position, the sun is shining for a minute, then night comes again.” Meanwhile in case of Maeterlinck the sun is not shining even for a moment, even love cannot give relief against the only sure thing, the death, and Balázs expresses it perfectly. Death is not painful here, the passing away happens slowly and unnoticeably, while people melt into nature, and become one with it. The birth carries the base of end in it, that is why there is not any tragical collapse, only a determinate turning of fate. Motionlessness and movements have the same end, but the changing can be the forerunner of death. The characters motionlessly wait for the movements, which are forced on them.

Supposedly the music of water can be the inspiration for Balázs to create this clattering sound to Mélisande: it is an interesting sound, the wounded bird and the fountain appear at the same time (the bird can be the symbol of soul and the mediator between the sky and the earth, as Mélisande is standing in the middle between the alter ego and the ego of instincts), but there is something in her from the sounds of the underwater people of Gungan from Star Wars, but it is unenjoyable, especially during one and half an hour. In case of Theomachia it was a fantastic idea to make Kronos speak backwards at that moment when he vomited his children, as Kronos lost his power with it over the time that stands out of the linear and turns backward, in case of Mélisande maybe silence can be convincing, the mystery, the narration next to the others, as the mixture of silence and waiting. It is really didactical that she can speak on clear human voice only at the time of confessing her love, because according to Balázs this is the only point where two people’s soul can meet finally. Bertolucci shows this ancient desire in his film, The last tango in Paris, the two characters hide their inner world similarly and they only sometimes take a trip into the world of animal sounds. The intuitive behaviour and the deep animal like calm are obvious even if they appear rarely.

If it was not evident to anybody, Mélisande is a symbol of water, then her blue hair can make it evident. In the original play the girl is combing her long, blonde hair, which is in connection with the miracle of sun and the energy of life, but the director excludes all sun shine. Maybe that makes the performance unrealistic: if sun does not light the place, we can only follow the movements of the risen shadows for light in the cemetery at midnight.

The role of the servants have changed in the performance by Balázs: the three maids are replaced here by doormen, who are real doormen, they protect fate from the both sides of the door. With their silent presence they express knowledge and with the litanies they are begging for the salvation of the dying ones in advance. Their movements are square, the Armenian cycling gets Egyptian taste, or changes into the turning of the dancing dervishes. The most beautiful moment of Tamás Vati’s choreography is when during their turning the servants put their hands on one another, then open it again as they are holding the world in their palms for a moment. The servants are outside the happenings, but they are not watching like doctors, but they do the right things in the right moments – they are the servants of fate, nobody else has power above them. The reinterpretation is really acceptable from one point of view, as it can create the atmosphere of the whole performance but on the other side it brings the sense of lack, because Balázs needs to miss a scene, where the talkative maids sum up the happenings. This interlude can be left from the point of the story, but it is important, because it can ease the end. The drawback of the direction that characters are always on a level, there are not any pause or ease, and we have a feeling of watching one picture without any interlude during a double lesson of history of art.

The strangest character is the little Yniold, he is played by Rémusz Szikszai, who is not the precocious child of Maeterlinck but instead of he is the little Idiot from the parody of Gazette, from “Fellejársz and Mélaszundi”. I am always shocked when in an opera a woman soprano in her 30s sings a little boy, with her identity crisis it is similar to the old castrated opera singers’ voice, but it is the other way around: here the over masculine boy is frightening too.

Judit Gombár’s costumes are made in the style of the Armenian middle age, oversized trousers, body covering, long, decorated coats and fez can be found in the masculine world, Queen Geneviève without any genre wears them too. Only Mélisande wears female dresses: her blue dress represents her clarity, her coronet, made of flowers makes her similar to a ripped flower, like in Medea by Pasolini (Kolkhis was almost on the area of Armenia, that is why the blue woman’s dress is similar too).

Béla Faragó composes the music similarly to the Georgian songs and Orthodox masses, which the servants sing on their bass voices. The characters’ motionlessness and the movements around them are expressed by the ancient music, Kornél Mogyoró with his percussion instruments expresses the rhythm of life, mythical connections of fates and the unknown things. During the whole play they cannot ease the fear of death, the music by changing of the sad and happy parts can defeat the uncertainty.

In the performance of the Bárka Theatre the power which hits the world disappears, we only get feelings and pains packed in vacuum, like love in the bottle... ű

Balázs gets his visual world from Parajanov. But in case of Parajanov the life remains too...

Bea Selmeczi, Színház, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)