MGP: Foul Play
Colin Higgins’ film, the Foul Play starts and ends with Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera. The assassination against the pope has been organised for the premier of The Mikado. They did not choose Sullivan’s comic opera form 1885 without any aims. The composer started his career with nice music and religious music composing. He was the boy soloist of the choir of the royal chapel. From the time he was 19 years old, he wrote te-deum, hallelujahs, odes, oratories, cantatas, procession marching songs and hymns as the organ player of the St. Michael’s church of Chester Square (The most well-known one starts with: “Go on Christ’s soldiers!”).
G & S
Gilbert & Sullivan are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the literature of operetta. They formed an inseparable couple. Their well-known nature shortened their names, G & S. It was enough to write and everybody knew who they were. Between 1871 and 1896, they wrote thirteen operas together. In contrast to the habits, where the composer’s name is written first, here Gilbert is the first one. They are written in ABC order. It is unimportant, that who is the musician and who is the librettist. Their easy plays were born from a common breath.
People in London did not get bored with The Mikado for two years continuously. When the interest got lower in the Savoy, a professional Mikado troupe brought it around the whole world, including Australia and South Africa. There had been nine thousands performances after the premier during three years. There was a success in Vienna. The cholera epidemic defeated the fulfilment of their contract in the popular theatre, which had been signed for a long time. Richard D’Oyly Carte’s troupe did not dare to travel here. Lajos Evva, the director of the popular theatre wanted to replace the missing guest performance of the English troupe. He asked the rights form London. They did not give it. He wrote another letter: they did not have legal-defence contrast with the material from London, so how much was it? It was not for sale. Then he would perform it without any permission, as he wrote it. If he was able to, then did it, it was their answer. Lajos Gundlach, the choreographer form Hamburg, travelled to London. He watched the performance carefully five times. He took notes. The Hungarian version was a blockbuster.
English operetta vs. Austrian-Hungarian
Hungarian success of The Mikado could be thanked for the patriotism of the viewers. For their Anti-Austrian feelings. They would clap just for the reason that the operetta was English. Therefore, it was not from Vienna. Nowadays it is fashionable everywhere except here in Hungary. (Besides its television version, I have known about a renewal for two decades. Mária Angyal directed it in Szeged, when the theatre played in the neighbouring cinema because of the reconstruction of the theatre. The prima donna was Andrea Harmath.) During the last decades, the viewers’ taste has connected to the operetta from Vienna. They exiled the French and English operettas form their programmes. Gilbert and Sullivan are too joyful, too melodic but not from the k.u.k. bucket of melodies. The biggest counterpoint against its performance: the too intelligent script and the too witty poems. They left the honey jar of the Austrian-Hungarian joviality.
The joyful dance of death
Arthur Seymour Sullivan’s libretto puts wittily the love under the shadow of the gallows. The beheading, torturing, the death at the stake and the cooking in the hot oil are threatening all characters. It is a cheerful environment. The atmosphere is kind. The comedy can be the most liberating if its story goes around the question of life and death. The Mikado handles death as easily as love. The absurdity of dialogues have critical realistic effect. They talk about cheating, official misuse, tyranny, accumulation of positions in public, without any hiding. To talk frankly about well-known things is operetta-libretto-like absurd. Sullivan got a noble title from Queen Victoria in 1883. However, Gilbert’s satiric governmental caricatures made the queen so angry, that she denied the honour from him repeatedly. She made only Edward a baron in 1907.
Comic opera on the University of Theatre and Film Art
All roles are played by three performers.
The student from the opera course of the Academy of Music makes the singing part. The student form the puppet master course of the university moves Judit Gombár’s puppet, which wears the mask of the opera from Beijing and tells the prosaic text. It sounds easy. It is not. There is an intensive connection between the singer and the prosaic actor. With a fetishist ecstasy, they grow together with their common puppet. The puppet depends strongly and emotionally on its mover and its singer partner. The ménage à trois covers with an ironic jealousy the triangulated unity of characters.
The aesthetic purity of puppet theatre has been confused for some decades by the coexistence of the animated puppets and the lifeless actors. We can find reason for it, when a man-sized Gulliver plays between the Lilliputian puppets. More and more of them free themselves behind the screen for self-display. Meanwhile the appearance of the puppet artists when they thank for the applause, with a little bit confused face, with their puppets in their hands can be such a moving experience at the end of a regular performance of the puppet theatre. Their face shows that the blanket has been grabbed from them, while in its protection they would have dealt with erotic plays. The living actor, who intrudes between the puppets, is similar to the exhibitionist, who is wandering around the primary schools, who opens the wings of his coat and shows his naked under body to the children. It is a good feeling for them, while their viewers just stare at them. Dezső Garas, the actor, who played Prospero in the Puppet Theatre thanks for his precise instinct once, kneed down to put his head to the level of the puppets, who were ruled by him. He changed himself into an object, between the en-souled puppets.
Living puppets with object-like people
The aesthetics part of the performance, The Mikado is clear. The lyre comes from the difference in size between the living player and the en-souled object. As the tiny puppet cuddles up to the living body for protection or the arm of the puppet touches the player’s body part: an emotional connection appears. The grotesque humour of the performance comes from the same root. As the tiny puppet, while it is searching for protection, escapes into a giant black bottom. Or it sits on the head of its singing voice, overpowers it. Katischa, the princess who is searching for love, with her graceful intriguing is similar to Eboli by Schiller or to Lady Milford. Nine puppets show the singing and prosaic roles of nine students from the opera course. Who or which eighteen of them move and lend their souls to them with songs or with tortuous logical, absurd funny texts. So twenty-seven of them are connected. Not with the wires of the marionettes but with physical touch. Or with the listening to one another. The tripled egos are listening to each other, to themselves and to the others vividly. Everybody has a vivid connection with everybody. The burlesque eroticism of the performance comes from it. The singing egos of the intriguers – as the corruptness and administrative confusion in the town of Titipu (in the 15th century!) is similar to, without mentioning any closer example, The Inspector by Gogol – are crawling on belly when they follow their puppets and their movers. The stage gets filled with laying bodies in piles, most of them in uniform-like black, the puppets rise with their colours from them. It is an erotic hecatomb. It is a lyric group sex. It is a block of joy. It is a spinning little ball. A twenty-seven times schizophrenic gives the unity of world. It is the wandering of soul in public. Meanwhile the sexual joy is really healthy, the play is filled with the hardly explainable mysticism.
Zoltán Balázs’ performances rhyme with each other. He seems to direct the same performance all the time. Ceremonies come alive by his hands, these performances are similar to each other, from different writers’ different plays, which were written on different language, with different genres. In his Ionesco in the Gypsy Parliament (Jack, or The Submission, 2001) the Gypsy, French, Hungarian Languages were mixed. In case of The Blacks the whites performed the blacks, the blacks (Gypsies) played the whites. The actors moved their mouths without any sound. Their opera singer counterparts dub-sang their over composed texts. During the performance, the School for Fools (2003) by Ghelderode the Gypsy, Latin, French and Hungarian language were mixed. The director added the speech of birds to the non-verbal theatre in the Theomachia. He used and István Erdős made play the duplication with the marionette characters or the doubled appearance in Pelléas and Mélisande too. As king Allemonde he doubled himself with a marionette puppet. (Now a marionette director helps the performance of the comic opera.) In case of the drama by Maeterlinck the theatrical vision of breakdown was formed by characters who were moved in a three floors high plane set. In Acropolis (2006) by Wispiansky David’s psalms could be listened to in Hebrew as an opera aria. It is something strange.
The director is searching with the border crossing of different language systems. He puts into category the intermediate uncertainty between the dream and reality. He is searching for the answer of his question in the half-conscious darkness. Obviously, he founds multi-layered answers. His love lyre is full of threats. His tragedy is ticklishly funny. His humour can make us sad. At the beginning of The Mikado the troupe turns ceremoniously towards the viewers with their chorus that asks an interesting question. The performance would like to find out who is who in reality. Zoltán Balázs’ performances go consistently on the boundary line of irrationality. In French, this something, which cannot be described is the “Je ne sai quoi”. Something strange would be its meaning. Balázs’ performances are searching for it. And there is something strange in them. In Spanish, this is the “duende”, as a demon must work in it.
Péter Gál Molnár, Mozgó Világ, 2007
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)
G & S
Gilbert & Sullivan are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the literature of operetta. They formed an inseparable couple. Their well-known nature shortened their names, G & S. It was enough to write and everybody knew who they were. Between 1871 and 1896, they wrote thirteen operas together. In contrast to the habits, where the composer’s name is written first, here Gilbert is the first one. They are written in ABC order. It is unimportant, that who is the musician and who is the librettist. Their easy plays were born from a common breath.
People in London did not get bored with The Mikado for two years continuously. When the interest got lower in the Savoy, a professional Mikado troupe brought it around the whole world, including Australia and South Africa. There had been nine thousands performances after the premier during three years. There was a success in Vienna. The cholera epidemic defeated the fulfilment of their contract in the popular theatre, which had been signed for a long time. Richard D’Oyly Carte’s troupe did not dare to travel here. Lajos Evva, the director of the popular theatre wanted to replace the missing guest performance of the English troupe. He asked the rights form London. They did not give it. He wrote another letter: they did not have legal-defence contrast with the material from London, so how much was it? It was not for sale. Then he would perform it without any permission, as he wrote it. If he was able to, then did it, it was their answer. Lajos Gundlach, the choreographer form Hamburg, travelled to London. He watched the performance carefully five times. He took notes. The Hungarian version was a blockbuster.
English operetta vs. Austrian-Hungarian
Hungarian success of The Mikado could be thanked for the patriotism of the viewers. For their Anti-Austrian feelings. They would clap just for the reason that the operetta was English. Therefore, it was not from Vienna. Nowadays it is fashionable everywhere except here in Hungary. (Besides its television version, I have known about a renewal for two decades. Mária Angyal directed it in Szeged, when the theatre played in the neighbouring cinema because of the reconstruction of the theatre. The prima donna was Andrea Harmath.) During the last decades, the viewers’ taste has connected to the operetta from Vienna. They exiled the French and English operettas form their programmes. Gilbert and Sullivan are too joyful, too melodic but not from the k.u.k. bucket of melodies. The biggest counterpoint against its performance: the too intelligent script and the too witty poems. They left the honey jar of the Austrian-Hungarian joviality.
The joyful dance of death
Arthur Seymour Sullivan’s libretto puts wittily the love under the shadow of the gallows. The beheading, torturing, the death at the stake and the cooking in the hot oil are threatening all characters. It is a cheerful environment. The atmosphere is kind. The comedy can be the most liberating if its story goes around the question of life and death. The Mikado handles death as easily as love. The absurdity of dialogues have critical realistic effect. They talk about cheating, official misuse, tyranny, accumulation of positions in public, without any hiding. To talk frankly about well-known things is operetta-libretto-like absurd. Sullivan got a noble title from Queen Victoria in 1883. However, Gilbert’s satiric governmental caricatures made the queen so angry, that she denied the honour from him repeatedly. She made only Edward a baron in 1907.
Comic opera on the University of Theatre and Film Art
All roles are played by three performers.
The student from the opera course of the Academy of Music makes the singing part. The student form the puppet master course of the university moves Judit Gombár’s puppet, which wears the mask of the opera from Beijing and tells the prosaic text. It sounds easy. It is not. There is an intensive connection between the singer and the prosaic actor. With a fetishist ecstasy, they grow together with their common puppet. The puppet depends strongly and emotionally on its mover and its singer partner. The ménage à trois covers with an ironic jealousy the triangulated unity of characters.
The aesthetic purity of puppet theatre has been confused for some decades by the coexistence of the animated puppets and the lifeless actors. We can find reason for it, when a man-sized Gulliver plays between the Lilliputian puppets. More and more of them free themselves behind the screen for self-display. Meanwhile the appearance of the puppet artists when they thank for the applause, with a little bit confused face, with their puppets in their hands can be such a moving experience at the end of a regular performance of the puppet theatre. Their face shows that the blanket has been grabbed from them, while in its protection they would have dealt with erotic plays. The living actor, who intrudes between the puppets, is similar to the exhibitionist, who is wandering around the primary schools, who opens the wings of his coat and shows his naked under body to the children. It is a good feeling for them, while their viewers just stare at them. Dezső Garas, the actor, who played Prospero in the Puppet Theatre thanks for his precise instinct once, kneed down to put his head to the level of the puppets, who were ruled by him. He changed himself into an object, between the en-souled puppets.
Living puppets with object-like people
The aesthetics part of the performance, The Mikado is clear. The lyre comes from the difference in size between the living player and the en-souled object. As the tiny puppet cuddles up to the living body for protection or the arm of the puppet touches the player’s body part: an emotional connection appears. The grotesque humour of the performance comes from the same root. As the tiny puppet, while it is searching for protection, escapes into a giant black bottom. Or it sits on the head of its singing voice, overpowers it. Katischa, the princess who is searching for love, with her graceful intriguing is similar to Eboli by Schiller or to Lady Milford. Nine puppets show the singing and prosaic roles of nine students from the opera course. Who or which eighteen of them move and lend their souls to them with songs or with tortuous logical, absurd funny texts. So twenty-seven of them are connected. Not with the wires of the marionettes but with physical touch. Or with the listening to one another. The tripled egos are listening to each other, to themselves and to the others vividly. Everybody has a vivid connection with everybody. The burlesque eroticism of the performance comes from it. The singing egos of the intriguers – as the corruptness and administrative confusion in the town of Titipu (in the 15th century!) is similar to, without mentioning any closer example, The Inspector by Gogol – are crawling on belly when they follow their puppets and their movers. The stage gets filled with laying bodies in piles, most of them in uniform-like black, the puppets rise with their colours from them. It is an erotic hecatomb. It is a lyric group sex. It is a block of joy. It is a spinning little ball. A twenty-seven times schizophrenic gives the unity of world. It is the wandering of soul in public. Meanwhile the sexual joy is really healthy, the play is filled with the hardly explainable mysticism.
Zoltán Balázs’ performances rhyme with each other. He seems to direct the same performance all the time. Ceremonies come alive by his hands, these performances are similar to each other, from different writers’ different plays, which were written on different language, with different genres. In his Ionesco in the Gypsy Parliament (Jack, or The Submission, 2001) the Gypsy, French, Hungarian Languages were mixed. In case of The Blacks the whites performed the blacks, the blacks (Gypsies) played the whites. The actors moved their mouths without any sound. Their opera singer counterparts dub-sang their over composed texts. During the performance, the School for Fools (2003) by Ghelderode the Gypsy, Latin, French and Hungarian language were mixed. The director added the speech of birds to the non-verbal theatre in the Theomachia. He used and István Erdős made play the duplication with the marionette characters or the doubled appearance in Pelléas and Mélisande too. As king Allemonde he doubled himself with a marionette puppet. (Now a marionette director helps the performance of the comic opera.) In case of the drama by Maeterlinck the theatrical vision of breakdown was formed by characters who were moved in a three floors high plane set. In Acropolis (2006) by Wispiansky David’s psalms could be listened to in Hebrew as an opera aria. It is something strange.
The director is searching with the border crossing of different language systems. He puts into category the intermediate uncertainty between the dream and reality. He is searching for the answer of his question in the half-conscious darkness. Obviously, he founds multi-layered answers. His love lyre is full of threats. His tragedy is ticklishly funny. His humour can make us sad. At the beginning of The Mikado the troupe turns ceremoniously towards the viewers with their chorus that asks an interesting question. The performance would like to find out who is who in reality. Zoltán Balázs’ performances go consistently on the boundary line of irrationality. In French, this something, which cannot be described is the “Je ne sai quoi”. Something strange would be its meaning. Balázs’ performances are searching for it. And there is something strange in them. In Spanish, this is the “duende”, as a demon must work in it.
Péter Gál Molnár, Mozgó Világ, 2007
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)