(Wyspianski: Acropolis; Ferenc Molnár: Liliom – Bárka Theatre)

Macbeth does not kill the dream; the hurry kills the theatre.

I cannot accept that the viewers who have paid for it, became the objects of an experiment. After the premier they changed the auditorium because we could not see well. Or the performance, to make it half an hour or even more shorter. The performance is not ready, the director fixes it every day – the viewers could see something different on Friday than on Thursday (it is not Péter Halász-like theatre which is up to date). The earlier ones are concrete examples from the past weeks. The director is lucky if he can experiment during the summer games the autumn premiere (maybe the summer viewers are unlucky), if they can realise that something has happened between the one in summer and autumn in the world or in the country.

Who makes permanent theatre, prepares for it for a long time, and shows it when it is ready. Well-known directors around the world spend months or more than a year to work out continuously their ideas before they start the rehearsals. Then they have rehearsals until they reach the optimum. In case of throwaway theatre, we do not need it. The throwaway theatre is similar to the invalid theatre tickets. It is invalid. Every night is a gig. Many times monthly or for years.

Theatrical people’s minimal politeness is to create the minimal conditions for watching it. For example they employ actors whose words can be understood. They organise the stage and auditorium that way that they can be heard. They analyse the effects of what they have done, and ask that the audience can get their aim, is there a possibility of communication. I sympathize with old theatre lovers, who left the Bárka Theatre during the interval of Acropolis, as he was sitting at the end of the huge barn-like hall and could not understand anything from the text. I was sitting in the middle and that way I did not understand only the two third of it. Partly because of the bad acoustic and partly because of the actors’ bad speaking. From actors without energy and with bad articulation, who are suffering from the lack of personality, a four hour long poetic text cannot be beard. Not even three of them (if they have shortened it since the premier). The inner working of the Maladype Theatre to build a troupe is moving, but they should do it between closed walls until the members of it could become suitable to fulfil the tasks. Up until now they have not been able to fulfil the task of performing Stanislaw Wyspiañski’s poem.

I did not understand Acropolis not only because of the hearing of the speech. I could not understand what I saw. I have known a few things about the writer and the play, but I would not talk about it. It is not the referee’s work to tell theatre-historical information, the place, story or aim of the play. The performance has to tell these. I have to interpret the performance in its own without any help (programme, cast, comments, reading experiences): these can be extras for those who are interested in. Acropolis in Bárka Theatre has two parts and both of them have two half parts. During the first quarter angels with ringing wings are whispering to silent statues on telephone books paths and between foldouts of books of tales, while they are moving on lifts of constructions annoyingly noisy. During the second one beachgoers with ancient Greek names are speaking about something in the same place. From the third one we can understand the well-known (for those who know it) story of Jacob, Isaak and Esau, which is told by eastern dances and during it they are picking up the wall to wall carpet. During the last one the singer with deep voice is singing for forty minutes in Hungarian and I think in Hebrew language while the actors sitting around him are playing the drums. All of it is really artistic. I can sense it in (a rare) moment of wakefulness; I have missed its meaning. The first part is directed by Sándor Zsótér the second by Zoltán Balázs. They are the stars of art theatre but according to some professional theatre makers they are dilettantes. There is a great confusion. The condemnation without watching and the critical ideas can be decoded in advance. There are some in their surroundings according to them they should get only admire not any criticism: in case of the later one a protester letter should be written inside. Both of them – as it is normal – work on a different level. From the point of view of their reception the prejudice is common on both sides, and many times it is supported by point of views outside the aesthetics. It is natural, if the aesthetic basic ideas of theatre are unclear both from theoretical and practical point of view, the basis of the professional general opinion is the boundless subjectivity.

We do not have to go far for concrete example, we can stay in Bárka Theatre next an easier play than Wyspianski’s. Next to Ferenc Molnár’s over played Liliom. With Péter Telihay’s direction the performance is bearable. Róbert Menczel pushes the stage to the backside wall of the hall – except the Linzmann scene which is played on the embankment with the unsuccessful money robbery, for which he has built the strip and standing places around it with the tribune for viewers on the useless half of the barn – with it he can avoid to connect actions to an era. The set is a construction from iron stairs, trapdoors and podiums and it can float in nothing similarly to “a bench of parks”, for which they have to climb on a ladder. The dresses – without any personal designer’s help – can be placed only more or less, we can say that in the consolidated socialism, but it has no importance as the trend of nowadays does not take of the synchronization of the vison and text. (If declamatory Brutus in suit is a politician why Muskátné, the noble carnival vendor cannot be a craftswoman with industrial license?) The theatre itself is stylization, an elevated reality – we can “put it” anywhere, if we put it consistently into a system of rules which is pointed out by ourselves.

There is not any problem until this homogeneous new medium can work integrally on its own. Juli and Mari are sitting on the branch of nothing, they are not bothered neither by the partly intrusive “official serves”, nor by the noisy trapdoor that warns them to the roughness of their life. Kinga Mezei and Kriszta Szorcsik are traditional girls from the countryside, there are not any embroideries of servants on them, the earlier one signs barefoot the cleanliness of society, the other one with ready-to-wear clothes her integration into the city. (Edit Zeke helps her get dressed.) Both of them are good, as well as László Széles whose Liliom is an innocent boy without any coolness (would he hit his Julika? he does it but does not make us believe it), Erik Ollé’s Ficsur is dangerous and mad like, Gábor Nagypál as Hugo is not shy, but calmly firm, Olga Varjú as Muskátné is excellent, she owns man and business without any vulgarity, with some kind of dignity.

The problem starts when during the scene of the police of sky the children in white suits are serving at the altar of Kyri, because they are there in the troupe. Neither the surrounding nor the Speaker, Attila Egyed who is throwing the beach ball are not written down better. There are too many soap bubbles – there were many of them in the “Park” too – but they have not got much meaning, it also disappears. But problem never occurs alone. As the director, László Babarczy uses the patented version – the scene in the sky is not the ending of the play, as in the case of Molnár, but it is put as a vision between Liliom’s suicide stabbing and his death – here comes the agony. During which the dying hero gets alive and sits out loosely next to Juli to speak (he has lost the knife maybe in the sky, which they have not pulled out of his wound not to bleed to death on his way). Then he is back to dying. After his death he gets up once more, and he is walking out the window symbolically into the eternity. There is nothing like this. After the resurrection, which is brought earlier it is impossible to get resurrected two more times. Not even once. If the transcendence has been before, in reality he can only die. He even has to. And must believe in the viewers’ fantasy. And in the professional basis of the direction.

Tamás Koltai, Élet és Irodalom, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)