Maeterlinck is a less known play writer in Hungary. He has a strange tone, secessionist, symbolist, his lyrical plays are not easy to understand from the realist point of view of theatres, the directors rarely try to put on stage his plays.

Zoltán Balázs is one of those youngsters who are not scared by exercises like this, who dare to try different language and tools from performance to performance, they like to do experiences with dramas that are defined as “rarely performed”, “hard to perform”, “dramas in books” and they like to dust the dramas that are forced to the bookshelves. Balázs has put the level very high with Theomachia and The Blacks.

We could see a special, ballad-like performance with unique mood in the Bárka Theatre. It is nicely choreographed, but a really static performance, with rich visual world. It is similar to a wonderful painting, in case of which people cannot get rid of its watching; we would like to spend a little more time at every scene. Many times we see something else than which is said, which is said by words; the locations are symbolic, we do not even leave the walls of the castle. The characters are motionless many times, their words and actions are usually different, every movements and every object have symbolic meaning too. The set is simple but very effective. We can see the arched corridors or rooms of the mysterious castle, there are three floors, each of them has nine arches. There are stairs on the sides, there are stairs also from the first floor to the deep. In front of us, in the middle there is a shadow of a leafless, dried up tree. The thin, graceful building, the precisely worked out lights, the costumes, the shining embroidered caftans all bring the feeling of being in the magical and mysterious eastern world, in the empire of the tales of thousand and one nights.

In Maeterlinck’s play the servants have role twice. In the first scene the maids clean and then open the gate: their work suggests that there will be a celebration in the castle, a big event is going to happen there. Later we will meet them in at the beginning of the fifth scene (they are not maids anymore but servants), they are gossiping, they tell and analyse the happenings. The castle is silent, there are secrets everywhere, but there will not be hidden details for them. In the play existence is less important, from the point of view of dramaturgy they do not have strong connection with the action. According to Zoltán Balázs they are the key characters of the performance. The three bass singers (Géza Gábor, Antal Cseh, Szabolcs Hámori) are walking around and singing, and they are acting in the most important cases. Their appearances and dresses are ceremonious, their movements are ceremonial; their singing is on an unknown language, and it is similar to Orthodox religious songs and Far-Eastern sounds, their texts are un-understandable and their gestures are mysterious, only the insiders have the key to understand them. They are similar to the three wise men from East or three popes. They are like moiras, who guard on the human fates, and decide their lines. They three know everything, they know the past and the future; they lead the characters towards their fate, which none of them can avoid.

From every point of view Mélisande is in the middle of the performance, which is signed by her position too. We can mostly see her in the middle of the second floor of the castle, so she is in the middle of the place vertically and horizontally too. Her figure is hardly motionless, her presence is very strong anyway. Zoltán Balázs gets the power of words from the main character, Mélisande’s mystery, fragility and vulnerability are increased by the fact that she cannot speak, instead of words, strange clicking sounds comes from her throat. Almost everybody understands her, (maybe the viewers too), but only Pelléas finds the same language with her, Pelléas perfectly understands all her “words”, and he can communicate with her on that language. Their fates have already been connected when they are standing in shapes of question marks above each other, or when they are standing backwards and watching the sea with candles in their hands and imitate the waves with their movements. During most of their common scenes Pelléas is somewhere else in the area, he is on another floor, meanwhile all these moments gain special importance. They are drawn into love. When they kiss each other, they put their hands on each other’s mouth. The actions which are on the stage sometimes different from those which are told by words. The lovers are outside the language, they do not communicate with their words. Their passionate love is fateful, unavoidable, but it is a miracle, which connect them to the language, that is why it is tragic: at the moment of their kiss, Mélisande starts speaking “human language” too.

At the end of Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas dies, but his child lives on, the future is there in front of the child who comes back from death. Zoltán Balázs does not use this open ending. He puts emphasis somewhere else, he shortens the play: the performance starts with the first scene of the play, it begins with Mélisande’s death, and then it ends with it too, only the characters are changed. Mélisande’s last words, while she is dying in the castle, are echoed by Mélisande’s words, who is found in the forest, their sounds are connected forever. Pelléas takes over Golaud’s role, and vice versa, their roles are interchanged. The first scene is the last one and the last one is the first one, the story is closed into itself, so it begins again and again from the beginning, it never ends. There is not any entrance, this is the curse of the castle, its residents’ fate. The tale never ends. It continues again and again, during a thousand and one nights.

Orsolya Kelemen, Fidelio, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)