It is easy for the Polish. They go every Sunday to the holy mass and understand the metaphors of liturgy. It is easy for viewers who can watch in the theatre a performance where there is background, there is conflict, there is development and everything, which they have got used to. It is easy to write about a writer who we know well, whose writings and plays can be touched. Well not! It will not be easy! – it is said in the Bárka Theatre and they perform Wyspianski’s play, Acropolis.

The European Book Publisher in 1989 published the writer’s plays with György Spiró’s translation (Acropolis was not there; it was translated by Vince Hajba). Except The November Night (Szolnok, Szigligeti Theatre, 1994 – Sándor Zsótér’s direction) the Hungarian theatre life has tried to avoid the writer up until now. As we do not have any other sources, everybody must quote Spiró. We can read details in the programme, in the news from his epilogue which he wrote to the book. It would not be a problem, as Spiró’s appreciation is clever, wise, punctual, as I can judge it without any Polish knowledge with my pure empathy, the translation must be excellent. The phenomenon can tell that we do not know anything about Wyspianski. He wanted to be an artist, with aims of Gesammtkunst. On his pastel painting, titled Straw Man we can see rose bushes surrounded by straw, with which we can meet in the Wedding too. His visions are always picturesque, more punctually statue-like. He wanted to write an opera, an opera without music.

„...this romantic idea is full of debris of once existed myths” – Spiró wrote it in connection with the play, Legion in the epilogue of the book. The debris of the myth. The Acropolis cannot be described more punctually or more beautifully than this. Four scenes: Sándor Zsótér directed the first two, Zoltán Balázs did the third and the forth.

The viewers are sitting around the orchestra. There is a line of chairs in a circle next to the walls. There is a lift in the middle of the place. On the ground there are roofs of crypts marked by telephone books, the stage is surrounded by pictured foldouts.

In the first scene the castle of Krakow, the statues of Wawel and its carpets get into life for a night, they have that time for life and love. Plaster cast statues are standing, crouching and laying everywhere. Some of them are from the night class by Huber Dési, others may have come from the college to play here. In this theatre there is not real life, there are not personalities, there are not actions, as it is about dead ones all of it can be obvious. Anyway the statues are playing. They are hugged, a voice is speaking in their names too. Maybe the aim comes from Grotowski: – he directed Acropolis himself too – searching for the gesture, which is true, and unusual at the same time: Éva Bakos reaches into a man torso which has lost its head. As she cannot do anything else...

The figures who are waiting on their knees indicate that they are all in the church, where the altar is the stage. It is not for sure of course. We can say that it is one possible result of the viewers’ freedom of interpretation. The beginning of the second scene does not come obviously after the end of the first one. The war of Troy, love and heroism. I think that in this system of signs the voice is the tool of communication, not the speaking, but it would be good to understand it, because I think that the text must be important too, otherwise they would not speak in poems. The actors of Maladype Theatre play with fantastic discipline and devotion, as we have got used to it from them. The hall is very big.

During the interval the viewers have to leave the auditorium – for some of them it is a final solution – then those who return will find a candle on their chairs. It is not hard to understand: one of the actors gives fire, with the help of these small flames everybody is connected to each other and to the performance.

Jacob’s story is coming. The sight is beautiful. In the middle there is a huge, orange flower, sun or anything, which will become a tent then David’s dress. The characters’ dresses are similar to the clothes of dervishes. The long sleeves of the dresses can stroke, hug even when its owner has gone on, just left their sleeves on their partners’ shoulder. The characters are moving in geometrical shapes, their movements are slow, their words are mostly direct quotes from the Bible. Mostly. At the end of the story, Jacob gives to Esau together with his presents the defeated angel too, and Esau forgives him.

The forth part is not separated sharply from the previous one. There is not much music so far, only in quotation marks. Here suddenly everything becomes music, song, pray, rhythm. With Szabolcs Hámori’s performance we can listen to King David’s psalms. The whole scene is just one monologue, with László Sáry’s music. Meanwhile the singer is turning around slowly and rolling up on himself his orange-sun-like dress to make total theatre with one performer. The others are playing the drums with Kornél Mogyoró’s leading and performing the choir. Here are two directors and two different worlds.

The first with its leanness, the second one with its picturesque visons strengthen his words. What is similar in them? Maybe that both of them turn away of the profaned naturalist theatre, and Wyspianski’s play is a great reason for it, which tries to find the possible solution in the myth and rites. There is not any solution of course. Nothing has finished, nothing is finished, everything will start again, even if Wawel collapses meanwhile and “theatre buries the viewers under itself”.

Margit Balla, AmaroDrom, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)