Marschner’s opera, which was performed in 1828 is an extremely interesting piece of music (even a singspiel?). The shudder is guaranteed not by the main character – who expected it, they had to be disappointed – by but its status in musical history: the drama is halfway between The Free-shooter (1821) and the Flying Dutchman (1843).

“The Vampire is a spoiled Don Giovanni anyway...”

The performance on its own is not a perfect one, but its historical worth ensured its place in György Kroó’s Wagner-seminars in the musical academy. Emmy’s ballad, which she sings at the beginning of the second act, “just” has to be mixed with ingenuity and Senáté was born from the Dutch, Blunt, Gadshill, Scrop and Green’s drinking in the pub (also from the II. act) and Suse Fellini-like self-scene come from the pages of Freischütz here. Another of my professors from the musical academy even during the interval of Lucretia “warned” me, that The Vampire is a spoiled Don Giovanni anyway.

Even the Wikipedia knows, that the trio of Ruthven - Emmy - George (the lord and the young farmer couple, who wants to get married) are the pandanus of the trio of Don Giovanni - Zerlina - Masetto. But there are no words on the internet about – however it was quite evident on the performance on Saturday – the fact that Berkley and Ruthven’s duel (at the beginning of the first act) is musically similar to the duel by governor and Don Giovanni, only the roles have been changed. While Marschner’s vampire is left by the soul (we do not know at that time, that it is only temporary), he is whispering the words, he has learnt from the governor of Sevilla. There are some similarities between the Aubry-Ruthven’s couple too, they are similar to Leporello and the big eater Don according to their interdependence. Another similarity is, that – similarly to the great example – the bloodsucker, to lower his appetite, uses his seduction similarly to Don Juan.

From the point of view of interpretation on stage, there are many intertextualities in The Vampire (there are holes in it) it gives chance to direct it with the usage of previous opera knowledge, anyway Zoltán Balázs has decided to come closer to the play not from the context of musical history. He handles Marschner’s opera, as it would have immanent and characteristic meaning on its own. He chose the more difficult way. Maybe this way is not hopeless at all (it is by the way), the chosen form is a dead end for sure. A beautiful performance was born, but the object of it has become a pure excuse.

I think the sensitive point of the performance is that ballad. It can even keep Zoltán Balázs’ – seeing from outside – Japanese-like, samurai-like conception too. That is why I think, that Balázs also feels the dramaturgical sensitivity of this moment (at least he shows it), the ceremonious, ritual form and the play can come together there in a memorable way. Maybe this moment can cause the emphasize of the ballad-like tone of the whole play, but understandably he does not want to move towards the Scottish art ballad, and originally cut out the Hungarian folk ballads: with them he would become inevitably similar to Béla Pintér’s theatre. He was not bothered anyway by the fact, that the chosen form language refers directly to Akira Kurosawa’s world, to the Japanese director’s Macbeth – adaptation. We have to remember the bloody throne.

If we have talked about so much the form language, then we have to come up with the formalism of Balázs’ work. The parallel system of signs can be alienating, and we have known his “trick” from his previous performances, with which he forces the actors-singers to concentrate in an extra way. But, in an opera basically more systems of signs are running parallel, story, text and music, and the relative independence of these can be realized in case of such a moderate author, as Marschner.

“It is the narcissism anyway...”

The using of a fourth layer seems to be exaggeration, especially if this fourth layer coves the others as a coating. It is not successful, if we can see, that the director likes this layer much more than those, which we already have. It is narcissism anyway, and it cannot be forgotten even if the picture, was conjured in front of the viewers, is a sight is about wonderfully artistic and improved culture of design, (set and costume designer: Judit Gombár) which can raise intensive feelings anyway. Even in the similarly narcistic critic too.

We can give the detailed analyse of the performance, but we have to mention it, that as a performance of the competition (add to is fast: the viewpoints of the competition are from lower quality than the viewers’ viewpoints from Rennes) it puts its own singers into a disadvantageous situation. From the point of view of singing technique there were some unpleasant formation, for example, Helen Kearns in the role of Janthe, who was the first victim, would have made her first sounds leaning forward, kept by her shoulders. But it is less interesting now, more unpleasant, that we should watch a performance from her and the others forced into just one mask. (I know, of course I know, that I except something from Zoltán Balázs, against which he has rebelled with all his works in theatre...) The exercise fulfilment of actors has become a fulfilment of a function.

The Syrian, Nabil Suliman, who sings the main character is a perfect vampire even without any masks. Zoltán Balázs did not build on his characteristic (according to the director’s statement we did not expect it), because of the attributes of a samurai he becomes similar to the other performers. His voice is really impressive, brassy, strong baritone. His speeches were characterized by plastic text telling and educated musicality. His partner, Marc Haffner, who was Aubry, could not compete with him, with his slider tenor. It was interesting that Helen Kearns sang much better as Emmy than Janthe.

“Finally remember the blood sucking itself...”

It is true, that the earlier one is a really good role – as we have written it above – she had to jump over dams too. Vanessa Le Charlés (Malwina) has a wonderful voice, but I am afraid, that her personality on stage has not been matured.

There is only one father, Christophe Fel could think about it, who performed all the three father roles of the opera, on a really good quality. I liked François Piolino’s easy tenor (George), and the shocking Karine Audebert (Suse), who performed the “tobacconist woman”. From the program we can learn, that the staging used many doubling (even triple characters), we should not look for really deep meaning, we may come up against clichés.

Finally, we should remember the blood sucking too. The actors performed the act with a beautifully made game. At the right moment, a long chain of pearls came up from the Earl’s dress, which was circled around the victim’s neck. When the murderous necklace got into Suliman’s mouth in a well posed position, it seemed to be really long canine teeth. It is a shame that Malwina got the same necklace at the end of the opera from Aubry (so he has become a vampire too).

Szabolcs Molnár, Operaportál, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

If someone would love to watch Heinrich Marschner’s opera, The Vampire because of the expectations of bloody and horrific scenes, then it is better to choose any film adaptations of a classical stories of vampire. The story of the drama, which was written in 1828 has some unexpected turns, and from the point of view of some details, the musical material can offer surprises, however during the last performance of Mezzo opera festival we had to admire, and not to be afraid.

Ruthven is the main character of the story, which takes place in Scotland in the 18th century, who is a vampire and according to the vampire master’s order, he will have to sacrifice three girls within twenty-four hours. Thanks to his attractive appearance and tempting power he could kill two women so called fast and without any greater difficulty. The third one seems to be easy too, as they would like him to marry the girl, and they urge the marriage too, but there is an opponent: the girl’s lover, Aubrey. He knows the truth about Ruthven’s personality, and he would like to save her lover, Malwina, sooner, but he cannot reveal the secret (that the marriageable earl is a vampire) then he would be under the curse too and he would become a vampire too.

In connection with Heinrich Marschner the literature always mentions Weber and Wagner too, to emphasize the composer’s temporary role. After watching the performance, it is a little bit understandable, why the opera houses of the world do not compete with one another to perform the opera, for the music historians this must be a more interesting material than to a viewer, who is used to the usual repertoire of usual opera houses. The director of the performance, Zoltán Balázs leaves out the adventurous scenes of the story, and the effects of a hunted castle, and similarly to his earlier performances, he dreams a static world on the stage, which is rich in sights – now he imitates the picture of the eastern world. The set is just a half circle shaped staircase, the place is divided into with a wall, which can be closed by sliding doors. All of it does not seem to be cool and sterile, because they make attractive the sight with colourful lights, the costumes are especially wonderful: the performers are wearing Japanese costumes, from fine material, with different bright colours.

The direction is precise, the choreographs are worked out, the choir move together concentratedly. The general impressions are bothered by the fact, that some clothes are made to be too long, and the singers walk carefully on the stairs, while they are afraid of the falling down. Ruthven and Aubry stand or move many times symmetrically, when only one of them is in action than the other one hides in the background, but this time they are there emphasized. Ruthven is not a figure from this world, he is a mythical figure, he cannot get rid of the human Aubry, as he knows his secret, and Aubry cannot get rid of Ruthven because his exposure is dangerous, then he has to be in his footsteps, if he would like to save his lover. Of course, the three women (Janthe, Emmy, Malwina) are important too, as they cannot resist Ruthven, the Don Giovanni of the vampires, who entirely enchant them. The performance is full of slow and staged movements, where there are many scenes, which seem to be totally motionless and standing picturesque, the choir, when they do not perform the choir of vampires, they usually congratulate to the future married couple or sing about the joy of drinking, so they represent the power of life and happiness between the cruel death actions. These scenes delay the final ending, but it has no use, that the choir change dresses many times, for the second and third time they seem to be repeating themselves. It is strange for the organised and detailed Japanese world, so the “buffa-scene” does not fit there at all, when Suse throws suddenly down her kimono and talks down her drunken husband and his friends, and hits their bottoms in underwear.

Independently from the sight there is a deeply arbitrary gesture in the connection of the Japanese world and this romantic opera, we cannot feel that the two worlds are strongly connected. Zoltán Balázs imagined the performance obviously into an eastern area, because for him the most important element of the opera, is the continuous presence of love and death through the roles of the two male characters, and the inseparable nature of it, and this idea is close to the eastern way of living, then to the western European. The difficulty is that this metaphorical relationship between Ruthven and Aubry is not formed in the performance. So, after all, this Japanese world can be adapted to any opera (without vampires and mythical creatures) independently from the original place and era.

The reason of it can be that the singers, who perform the opponents, have really different performance, according to their voices Nabil Sulimann became the winner against Marc Haffnerrel, who performed Aubry. The figures of the two killed women, is one role, but Helen Kearns as Janthe and Emmy seemed to be different singers, first she was weak and insignificant, but she got power for the second part. From Malwina’s (Vanessa Le Charlès) figure I missed the complexity very much, which could form her struggle really interesting and vivid between the two men, the love triangle. It is not so lucky, that the director puts to the box on the first floor, the choir of vampires and the vampire master, however the viewers turn their heads excitedly, but the conductor, who sometimes has difficulty to bring the orchestra together, made their work more difficult.

At the end of the performance the strike of a clock can be heard from the background, to mark that the twenty-four hours are over, the vampire – as he could not sacrifice all the three girls – disappears behind the wall, and we can see his blurred shadow. Everyone can breathe happily, that the vampire is dead. Malwina is saved. Then from the new husband’s hand a string of pearls comes up, the same one, with which Ruthven tidied inseparably to himself his former victims. Malwina cannot be saved. Aubry has become a vampire too. The director did not choose the happy ending. This is The Vampire in Japanese style. Anyway, the seppuku was cancelled.

Orsolya Kelemen, Ellenfény, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Another theatrical record, which raises nice nostalgia and has now discoveries too of course: it is Shakespeare’s Hamlet from Bárka Theatre.

I rarely have the desire to watch a performance again. The re-watching of Hamlet excites me – as Péter Gál Molnár said in his critic in Népszabadság in 2005 in connection with the performance of Bárka Theatre. I can admit that I had similar feelings, when I saw, that the Maladype Theatre connected to Shakespeare’s birthday made accessible on their YouTube channel the recording of Hamlet, directed by Tim Carroll. I also watched the performance that time in Bárka Theatre, it had great success, as the director, who was the main director of Globe Theatre in London then, worked as a guest here with many ideas, and he made the performance more interesting with tricks that could be seen as marketing turns too. The record, that is broadcasted now, was recorded on the final performance of the drama on 4th June 2006 with hand cameras. Many things have changed so far, there is not Bárka anymore, the members of that troupe have been together any more. Zoltán Balázs, who performed the main character, has formed his own company, Maladype has had great successes, but it could not avoid crisis too. So Hamlet that way, gives us the opportunity to a subjective time travelling.

The beginning of the performance is special too, as many times they decide with a draw, or some kind of games, who would play the roles that evening. Anikó Varga and Kristóf Horváth, who will perform later, conduct all of it. The viewers get different properties, which would get important roles later in the scenes. The actors perform in civil dresses, Claudius (Attila Egyed), for example, is presented almost all through the performance, with a jumper, tied around his waist. There is not traditional stage or set, they rearrange the place after each acts. Everything happens around and with the viewers. Many of us cannot get avoid the involvement into the performance. Many times Zoltán Balázs gets them, pulled them into the scenes. But he does it so naturally and passionately that it is hard to stand against him. Sometimes he puts whipped cream on a viewer, then sometimes they slurp water together, which is poured over a colander.

It can be seen, that Balázs finds out there, that properties or viewers he would like to use. He builds up the character from more colours. He is a clown and a dramatic hero at the same time. Besides it we can see acrobatic movements and scales of moves from his all through the performance. He performs through the whole theatre. If he needs, he sits in a viewer’s lap, or asks a member of his auditorium to dance with him. Three of them perform the monologue, “To be or not to be”, he does it together with an older and a child viewers. The important thing is, that any of us can become Hamlet any time, who if he realise the betrayal, the lie, has to decide what to do. He gives it up or fights for the truth, for his own truth.

While watching the record of the almost three and half hours long performance, we can feel well, that what kind of motivated group was in the Bárka then, who could speak the same theatrical language. It was good to see, besides those, who I have mentioned, Olga Varjú (Gertrud), Kriszta Szorcsik (Actor Queen), József Czintos (Polonius), Balázs Dévai (Horatio), Róbert Kardos (Rosencrantz) Gábor Nagypál (Guildenstern), Zoltán Seress (Actor King/Ghost), Béla Gados (Gravedigger I) and Erik Ollé (Laertes).

Between the viewers, we could see well-known faces, and many youngsters, who liked Bárka, as a professional workshop, which was always searching for something new. The record rises a nice nostalgia, and it strengthens that theatre is a one-person genre, sooner or later, we will have to sit down again next to each other, not only because of that, they can pour whipped cream on us.

Gyula Balogh, Népszava, 2020

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Hamlet in Bárka is a charming performance. As is would be filled with the early Brecht’s slogan: What are you staring at so romantically? It gets the frivolous traditions, the fossilized consensuses from Shakespeare’s tragedy. It is fresh, cheeky, playful, happy, imitation-like. The viewers can choose the chairs between the others, on which they would like to sit and the place of it too. They draw for the evening (except the main character) who will play the other roles. Some of them are prepared from six roles. From the hat, they can draw for each scene that the scene would happen on which part of the stage. All of us have to bring a CD with us, or keep an object in their lap. Then the actors take them randomly and build in their performance. Hamlet and Laertes’ fencing scene happens with a spaetzle maker and knife. The spaetzle maker is the poisoned sword.

Judit Csanádi’s bumpy structure of podiums are the stage and auditorium at the same time. The chairs can be put anywhere, except for the streets, marked by the carpets, however the actors are walking also between the chairs, come down between and behind the viewers too, they are watching all through it, and we cannot know: from where they will come into the performance. It is not a Shakespeare puzzle anyway. Tim Carroll, the director, hides himself in the formation of the performance. He does not perform the drama instead of the actors. On the contrary: he gets the directors from the actors, their creativity, imagination, adaptability to their unexpected situations. Even the distracting unforeseeable things can lose the main line of their roles and the story itself. This method is liberating and strictly disciplinary.

A happy seriousness pushes out the acting of importance. The smaller playfulness of the text also remains instead of the traditional jokes. The games of words, the teasing, which can push into the corner, are shining because of true humour. Hamlet’s “madness” hides into playfulness. Zoltán Balázs owns the main character with sparkling self-control, with the superior understanding knowledge of the text. Everything, which is accidental, moody new-coming thing, or the speaking out to the viewers, are all healthily appropriate. Hamlet suddenly sits into a girl’s lap. He cools Claudius down in the royal hall, with a fan, which he gets from a viewer, then he forms a cockscomb to himself from it to his head, he gives it to the queen, who obviously, ingeniously goes on with the life of the found object on the stage.

The fencing hall is closed lowly. In the middle they have stretched a cut white banner over the viewers head. Through its cut hole, in the middle, Zoltán Balázs can see up until God above. The appearance of ghost, at night, happens in steady, diffused light, it is a performance by the lights of torches, it is daylight, as in case of the performances of Elizabethan’s time, in the afternoons, or similarly to the performances by daylight, in the yard of the Globe memory theatre in the district of Southwark, in London, which was reconstructed according to Sam Wanamaker, American actor’s ideas.

Our contemporary. Polonius: Béla Gados. He is not a clown-like governor. His lessons are serious, correct. His talkative nature belongs to the main-front officer’s fussiness of today. He plays the role instead of Hamlet’s critical opinion about him. He lets the freedom of opinion formation to the viewers. The clowns of Shakespeare’s time, do not know about themselves, that they are funny. Maybe just József Czintos’ First gravedigger has some folk play-like tradition in his performance, however, from one of his sentences the honest spontaneity comes up.

Róbert Kardos serves beloved, he is able to love, a loveable Horatio. He grows his ungrateful role with his consideration and endless presence. Even when he is mingled between the viewers, he follows the happenings carefully. He is the accurate witness of spoiled times.

Zoltán Seress (Claudius) is the incestuous Danish one, sometimes gets lost in the recitation of the “great style”. He is solvable: many Hamlet performances have instilled stress into us too, some celebratory elevation. We are surprised by all the lines, which are different from the Arany’s translation. We realize ashamedly that we know it badly, there are stresses forced into us, and idle interpretations. We gratefully accept the human accents, which opens the fresh meanings of the text, which we can hear for the first time with their real meanings. In the scene of the Mousetrap, Seress is unexpectedly suppressed, he asks with quiet worry, during the Gonzago play: "Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in it?". His terrified, quiet voice is more moving than the usual fake-dramatic theatrical outbreak. (Béla Faragó musical contribution limits to the most important and tactful sounds.)

Balázs looks up into the sky through the hole on the banner before the great monologue. He is standing there for a moment. The actions slow down. And these go on in the actor. Inside the viewers. When he has already recharged, he does not start his poetic song. He speaks with unaffected simplicity (he does not talk to the viewers then, he asks himself): to be or not to be. Break. A long break. He goes on with a similarly unceremonious question: that is the question. He is thinking through the whole monologue. He changes place. And he starts it again. He does it more colourfully, because he has already known the answers for the repeated questions. With his teen-like self-pity gets to the edge of crying. He snivels into the final great question. It is the trick of the honest self-examination instead of the sounding attraction. It is the confession of the healthy fear of death. He puts on himself a coat from a young viewer’s lap. He peacocks in it. He gets red plastic rack into his hand. As it would be a sword, but he puts off its usage. And unexpectedly he handles the rack as a rack: he puts it into the shoulders of his T-shirt, he hangs himself up by his own power.

Attila Egyed is the Ghost and the Actor King. How can someone become the ghost of the medieval father in a knitted blue shirt, between the viewers’ chairs, totally enlighten? He has an unfinished movement, he lures his orphan after himself with it. It is a real movement by the Ghost. An authentic ghost is made by his partner on stage. Balázs sticks to him, tries to reach him on tiptoe, he holds on his father, to be able to grow up to him, to reach his height. The man, who wants to grow a head higher is grotesque, and he is more pathetic than any promises, this adjustment to the greater man’s size.

Gabi Varga tells Fortinbras text from the end of the drama. She is the new emancipated womanish order. Hamlet has been performed as roles of trousers (Sarah Bernhardt and Asta Nielsen), the ending scene has never been in a woman’s hands. It is similar to that time, when in Benno Benson’s Hamlet in Berlin, the director’s little son arrives as the head of the conqueror army and the frivolous childish kingdom begins.

Kinga Mezei’s Ophelia in her tilted mental balance, comes in front of the royal couple with two pairs of shoes. She repeats words, as a stuck in CD player. During the funeral procession she goes in the front between the viewers’ divided lines, up to the grave, which is on the steeply rising mountain of set. He is not taken by St. Michael’s horse. He goes on his own foot to his grave, with some steps ahead the royal march. He can be seen as a ghost too. But a real actor goes towards his grave. The rivalry between Laertes and Hamlet is the bidding of their love (would you eat crocodile?), it is more serious than it, as the stake is there in reality. They do not argue about abstract love. The two boys go against each other as Romeo and Tybalt do it. The useless intervention of their partners, ends in a brawl, as in the case of collective panic in the school yard.

Tim Carroll’s performance is a theatrical gambling (but it is a game). They cannot give life to random objects every evening. On the dress rehearsal, I watched, the prince got a grotesque rubber animal as the scull of Yorick. The actor’s fast intellectual decision made the toy animal authentic. The other night a tennis ball was the head of the clown of yard, who is dead for 23 years. It flew up into the hung ceiling, and rolled above us there as a shadow.

The sluggish Tibor Mészáros, from the Jordán-Andor Lukáts’ class, and Gábor Nagypál with his caffee-mug-like eyes from Novi Sud (as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or Guildenstern and Rosencrantz) could make real, that they were fellow students with Hamlet and Horatio in Wittenberg. The four boys behaved like school boys. Nagypál gave a box of medicine into Hamlet’s hand instead of a flute, he pushed it into his face, used the top of the box as keyboard, then pulled the box on his schoolmate’s nose, who was forced into the corner.

Kristóf Horváth as Ostrick behaved as a normal subject of the court, instead of prinking garishly it, he does an important exercise at the heir by his ruler. The humility towards the superior one is more humorous, than the traditional jokes of the role.

The actors are insolently playful. They have close contact to one another. They have close contact to the viewers too. Olga Varjú played Gertrud, the queen with the hard womanhood of her power. But there was not any hurt on her dignity, when she cleaned her son’s sweaty face during the fencing scene, with one of the girl viewer’s long hair. And the tragedy is not got hurt by the fact, that Hamlet spited out a probably imagined hair.

On a partly school-like sound Tibor Pásztor and Tamás Törőcsik started the performance in the short roles of the two guards. Kriszta Szorcsik’s Actor Queen, and the silent performance of the masked troupe were featureless. The Second gravedigger was Anikó Varga, we could learn it more form the cast, than from the performance. Kamilla Fátyol was Lucianus and the Priest at the funeral. Gábor Szabó, as Fortinbras’ captain, played a clown-trick with a bag in his hand with the questioning Hamlet, and he answered with bored outstanding way, as he was stopped during the fulfilment of his important work by a fussy passenger. If there had been some excuses in connection with some of the performers because of their roles, in the evening, all members of the troupe could affect with intensive attention and constant standby.

Hamlet by the actors of Bárka and Carroll is a tempter experiment, because of the fact that the viewers usually stand horrified against the tricks to take them into the performance. Hamlet made two honourable men stand on their chairs, to compare to his mother the advantages of the dead king to the pretender to bed and throne. The two respectful men were standing there for long, devotedly, between the mostly young viewers. They tolerated, even enjoyed it: they enjoyed their performance. One of them, who was always against the mad-made Shakespeare, sat back softened. And he became the believer of the play. The trial to make the viewers active is usually accepted reluctantly because they would like to make decide. In case of Hamlet they only free their buried childish playfulness. Bárka can free the viewers from the ballast that the learning of the elevated culture is a torturous work. It can give back the ceremonious wonder of theatre, it is lonely irreproducibility.

I rarely have the desire to watch a performance again. Hamlet excites me to watch again.

Péter Gál Molnár, Népszabadság, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The theatres are ready to reform to the right measure any drama of international literature. The graduated director-like men and bungler self-realizing gibberish tellers, ancient conservative fake-reformers, and re-interpreters, who are satisfied with stone-like traditions, official theatres, who are supported by governments and local governments and fringe troupes, which are supported by charities take the drama texts with forks as Csáky’s straws. They adapt freely. They turn the story upside down. They cut into theatrical clips the linear story. They push the story into century they like. They put jeans on rococo and ancient times. For the directors with sluggish head it is enough if they modernise with a mobile phone. They are changing the genders. They put together roles, which are against each other. They add contemporary songs, poems or opera arias to the story and face it with annoying overused hits. They mix up the order of scenes. They strengthen everything, which they have understood from the text and cut those lines, which they have not. They use freely classical texts if they are not protected by law.

Chekhov died 102 years ago. He loosened the narrative on stage, G.B. Shaw used his characters on stage as social megaphones. At Chekhov’ time the directors grabbed the theatrical autonomy. The dramas of the 20th century, were always in war against staging. However, the profession of drama writing still seemed to be working. From Reinhardt’s time the theatrical performances have become independent, Gordon Craig, who mostly remained directors of papers but he reformed the theatre in theory. The last great drama writer Bertolt Brecht re- wrote the ancient tales. He fulfilled theatrical reforms. He died fifty years ago. The authors of anti-theatre - Beckett, Ionesco, Genet – are the poets of dissolution.

Jerzy Grotowski, who graduated in GITISZ in Moscow, improved the theatre of neurology from Stanislavski’s psychological theatre, which can lead to ecstasy. Bob Wilson, the American speech therapist and sculptor, brought to success the pathological non-verbal theatre. Peter Brook, who could be proud not only of his performances from Shakespeare, but he could get the modern lesson from Seneca too, and even: in Paris, he put on stage Billetdoux boulevard drama, the Csin-csin which is camouflaged to be avant-garde, suddenly he left RSC, the traditional (“dead”) theatres. He left behind the drama literature of the world, from the money of UNESCO he formed an experimental workshop in Paris.

“Who is there?”

Peter Brook put on stage Hamlet first in 1955, with Paul Scofield’s Hamlet, with Alec Clunes and Mary Ure (Mrs Osborne) in the main roles. Then in Paris in the Bouffes du Nord, he cut the tragedy into two and a half hours, with the title: Qui Est La (1996). The story of the compressed drama went on until Ophelia’s death. The title was the same as the first line of the tragedy. Bernardo, who guards on the tower asks: Who is there? We usually do not understand the question. Those members of the troupe, who are not paid well, usually say the opening lines with deep voices. They validate themselves instead of the text.

In case of Brook, the African Bakary Sangare played the Danish prince in white tunic, Giovanna Mezzogiorno was Ophelia, Bruce Myers performed Polonius, Claudius was the Japanese Sotigui Kouyati, Sotigue Kouyate performed the ghost, Horatio was performed by David Bennent (He was the perfect Caliban of The Tempest), Gertrud was performed by his sister, Anne Bennent, who left the Academia Theatre of Vienna for the short cut role, she left Yvonne, the princess of Burgundy from Gombrowicz, directed by Ascher (Eszter Csákányi got her role). Three unstable chairs, an Iranian musician (Mahmoud Tabrizi-Zadeh) and only seven actors performed the shortened tragedy. None of them were French between them. According to the critic of Le Monde, the text of the performance had no meaning. He called the director a “saint cow”. In 2000, Brook, in Offenbach’s previous theatre, he formed The Tragedy of Hamlet into a travesty with one hour and forty minutes long performing time, and he combined roles too: Claudius and the Ghost, Polonius and the First gravedigger, Rosencrantz – Actor King, Guildenstern – Actor Queen – Laertes; with Shantala Shivalingappa as Ophelia, with his wife, the less interesting, Natasha Parry as Gertrud, and the thirty years old black British, Adrian Lester in the title role; he performed previously Rosalinda in the performance of As You Like It, which was performed by just men, the Cheek By Jowl, directed by Sam Mendes.

In Ljubimov’s Hamlet the curtain became a political main-character. Brook left the tragedy in half. The Belgradian Atelje 212 denimized it. Feró Nagy lumpenized it. Bob Wilson changed it to be a one-man-show: with wonderful lighting effects, in a perpendicular place of stage he performed the monologues alone. In the National Theatre of Cairo, in its studio on the IV. floor (1999) Hamlet was Asraf Abdel Rauf, Ophelia was Hala Tawakul, Claudius was Esszam Szubhi, Gertrud was Nadja Mahmud. These four actors, and Szajed Szulejman, the director, the five of them worked together there. They were more than the viewers. In Vilnius, Meno Fortas’ first performance was the Hamlet. We could watch Nekrosius’ performance in the Víg Theatre, as a guest performance (2000). In Merlin, eight English actors, with doubled merged roles, performed a funny Hamlet (2005).

Cockroach-Hamlet

Feró Nagy wrote a Rock-Hamlet from Shakespeare to Kecskemét. The theatre broke up. Feró Nagy worked on his performance. The rock-opera was put on CD. The Rock Theatre performed in Gropius Studio on the Stage of University (1987). Folk song adaptations were arguing with tango in it. Opera parodies, which imitated Mozart, with forms of music of dance. It was hysterical, overworked, excitedly passionate. Its musical peak points were not the same with the peak points of the drama. Feró Nagy did not perform an amateur Hamlet. The ungracefulness of his movements proved the social truth of the character. He told the text without bad dramatic feelings, with fascinating incidental nature, he almost threw it, but he gave inner, mental weight to the diction. Feró Nagy’s Hamlet was a very bitter prince, He was restless. He was moving all the time. He calmed down only when he realised his task, as he was running forcedly without any aims. His irritability was resentment. His ability to attack was protection. His bitingness was terrified vulnerability. In the performance, which is enlightened by lights of a disco, there was one more, heavy, appreciable performance: László Waszlavik, The bad man, in the doubled role of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father and the Actor King, he mocked nicely, in a parodist way the fake-dramatic gargling by the professional tragic buffalos.

What Feró Nagy did, was far from that, how Gábor Bódy (and Szikora) treated Shakespeare in Győr (1984), or that Ljubimov did with it in Taganka. Vysotsky the prince from Moscow, was similarly a pop singer, with irritating loud songs, overused, stretched out, black jumper. These were torn Hamlets. Is Hamlet’s black jumper important? It is really important. It is called as interpretation. If the Danish heir to the throne is not wandering with a gold chain around his neck, in night-black, romantic top, but he is the tramp of our modern cities: it is a decisive interpretation.

Hamlet of today

We can watch three Hamlets at the same time in Pest. In Madách, in Tivoli and in Bárka Theatre.

Ottó Viczián appears as prince Imre. He is a catholic saint, however, he came from the protestant Wittenberg together with Luther’s lessons. In a shirt, with ski hat, he is the civil educated Lajos Bertók, and there is not any differences between Zoltán Balázs’ Hamlet’s costumes and the viewers’ dresses, who are watching Hamlet.

The three Hamlets, which were performed almost at the same time in three theatres, there is one thing in common, than they cannot give out all roles of tragedy in any of these troupes. There are not enough, good, experienced in speech, suitable actors, who can understand the poems in a modern way. There are not actors.

Kerényi’s Hamlet is a political pamphlet. It is the director’s diary about his social mood. His hero is a thin, blonde boy, who is closed between the stonewalls, against the derelict world. Hamlet is stuck between two opposite walls of the castle in the Studio of Madách theatre. The viewers can sit on the two sides of the long run away- (Viktor Orbán is in front of me.) On my left (On Orbán’s right) there is a clock without hands on the tower of the royal castle. The soundings of the bells sign the time, which is out of joint. The characters count loudly the passing time. They tell what time it is. From Kerényi’s castrate-likely sharp and rasp-like smooth public work, his performance in theatre is very different. His Hamlet is getting thicken around pamphlet like thoughts, but he is hidden by artistic tools. He is understandable but is not similar to a pamphlet anyway.

The legal king’s follower hides his eyes with his right hand from the dirty world. He comes back as the Actor King too. He keeps his hand in front of his eyes similarly to the ghost. The connection of the roles of the King and the Actor King is an interesting (it is not a forced one) idea by the director: it expresses that where betrayal is, then it is a social gesture that pervades everything. As well as in the royal court and in the theatrical troupe.

Where is betrayal, there is betrayal!

Hamlet as a monologue

Hamlet by János Sándor is the result of Lajos Bertók’s talent, then the expression of it: it will never be better. It is a benefit performance. It is a will by a director.

Bertók’s Hamlet in the racket base in Zsámbék (2004) on the wide screen, he is enlarged and restless, and after it, he gives only close pictures about the royal Danish one. Hamlet in Nagymező Street is clear. He is simple in his movements. He is richer in thinking in open area. He makes a dialogue from his monologue. He does not simply start the top hits like, well-known poem, but he goes on with the solution of his dramatic exercise. He wants to finish the learning of the reasons, which move everything. He is thinking in public. He shares his problems with the viewers. He does not pretend that he does not stand on the stage, and the paying viewers just watch him secretly from the darkness of the auditorium. It is far from Bertók to flirt with his viewers. He does not tell his monologues to the viewers but he shares his ideas with them. Maybe they can help each other.

Hamlet as a common game

Tim Carroll’s Hamlet in Bárka Theatre is pure theatre. However, the English director made a performance, which is scrupulously loyal to letters: the theatrical paradise, which seems to be unreachable, appeared there, which he really desired: he frees the actors and viewers from routine, and actives them: so the actors and viewers are involved in the same way in the performance of the evening. Hamlet is a childish performance. Only in case of the final of the children-performances can happen the viewers’ liberation, when they throw from the stage colourful balls to the auditorium, and the child viewers from time to time throw them back. Carroll’s Hamlet is once in a lifetime thing and it is full of unpredictable surprises, it is an unrepeatable ceremony. Because of its nature, there are better and less successful performances.

The precondition of its creation is the ideological land of no one. It was not born under any political flags. Its appearance on stage cannot be connected to any mental flow. Only pure theatrical effects can be between its bricks. The actors and viewers take part in it with the same heart rate. They are watching each-others’ heart beating. The actors and the viewers. The viewers are playing together with the demonstrators. They have effect on one another. They influence, change the nature of the performance.

Hamlet in Bárka Theatre is not an alternative theatre. We can know: there is nothing like this. If there is, the alternative can only mean: it is whether theatre or not. Hamlet in Bárka is pure theatre. Its bricks are the tempo-rhythm, the common interest: being together once, the breathing together. It is not the umpteenth performance of Hamlet, the Danish prince’s tragedy on stage. It is not a depressing repetition of the classical tragedy. It is not an international masterpiece celebrated on stage. It is disrespect, which is loyal to letters, it is a childishly playful composition.

Its frivolity is saint seriousness. Its playfulness has connection with the hidden deepness of soul. An unknown story happens together with the viewers’ active participation and it is full of unpredictable suddenness things.

They do not perform the restoration of a five hundred years old drama. The happenings of today is born in front of us. The actors and viewers write together Hamlet that evening. The narrative literature ends. We are not interested in what is happening, but in how it is happening. We get to the basic elements of tension of stage: to the interesting nature of the speech between us, it is independent from those things which the actors tell to one another (When Hamlet tells: Swear on my sword! and holds an apple in his hand, he bites passionately into it, and Horatio, Bernardo and Marcellus bite into the saint fruit, which is necessary for the swearing. This fruit follows the whole performance, they sometimes put it on a head, like Vilmos Tell did it on his son’s head, and our attention is organised differently that way, than we would follow Shakespeare’s tale).

We do not take care of what is happening. We are watching as the actors (and the viewers) take care of one another. We are watching attention. The rare ceremony, that we are interestedly together with people, with whom we are interested in one another. We are not interested in the turns of the tale, we are interested in the fulfilment of unexpected new things. In the new tricks. With how fast reaction can the actors answer to surprising situations. How colourful is our imagination. Do we have superciliously the topic, how many convincing version can they improvise for us. Then when they step over the invulnerable border between actors and viewers, how easily they can bring us into the performance. We gloat over the chosen viewers’ temporary embarrassment, and we are happy when the viewers let themselves become performers too.

The performance is not held together by the turns of the tale, but by the rhythm, the inner melody of it.

Apple

Hamlet asks his followers to swear not to talk about his father’s ghost. Swear on my sword – Hamlet said, Zoltán Balázs grabs an apple instead of a sword to make them swear on it. He tastes it, keeps it to his partners, and they one by one bites a blood contract from the fruit. It is ironic and pathetic at the same time. Is Hamlet with sword or tailcoat? – it makes theatres interested from Sir Barry Jackson contemporary like performance in Birmingham, 80 years ago. An actor can have contemporary thinking with a sword in his hand too and bad in an old-fashioned way in a jumper too. The apple (as a sword), which gets into his hand by accident, it can ease the comfortable clarity in theatre. It can move the viewers’ imagination. It stimulates multidirectional association. Originally the I/5. scene has a comical rushing, hysterical moving, insisting, childishly rude basic colour. The directors usually leaves the dark humour of the scene on behalf of the “unity of style”. The apple is a suitable comic tool. It can live on its life thanks for the actors’ enlisted imaginations. Horatio puts on his head, the half-eaten apple, Hamlet targets him, like the circus-like clown-joke, which is the parody of the Gessler-scene of Vilmos Tell. Much later, maybe during the duel scene the apple appears unexpectedly in Horatio’s hand: it is not pushy, just makes them remember the kept promise, so that the ghost’s order will be fulfilled now.

The rebellious Danish

In the National Theatre at the head of the group of many members, Laertes rushed in the throne hall in 1954. He stepped to the head of the unsatisfied Danish people to put the domestic political crisis back to its joint.

Is Denmark a prison? Then it is for everybody!

To start a revolution in Elsinore: it is a suspiciously historical materialistic interpretation. In the performance – loyal to the text – there are times of war: the Norwegian Fortinbras’ troops marched through Denmark against Poland.

In Hamlet in Madách Theatre, there is army noise outside, and the lonely, angry Laertes ran to the royal couple because of his family affairs.

In Bárka Theatre, there is musical noise. Laertes rushed in. Suddenly we, the viewers become the angry Danish people in the light auditorium, who are unsatisfied with the situation in Elsinore. The public, who has been made active, dethrone the compulsory reading. They pushed from the throne of the saints the tragedy of all tragedies. The playful objectivity encourages us to rebellious independence.

And the others?

Horatio is Hamlet’s emotionless searcher. He is an excellent observer. Fortinbras, the new power, misses the end of the performance. The others: (are not) silence. Horatio goes around on the stage, he counts loud the number of dead people or the chimes. How much time has left until the change?

Kerényi’s Hamlet in Madách Theatre introduces the opening of the new era. Tim Carroll’s performance is a common ceremony of people. János Sándor brings the heir’s tragedy until a bitter confession. For a long time, the directors have projected (Benno Besson, Ascher Tamás, Zsámbéki) that nobody better can come after the pretender Claudius, but they have not told either that after the thinking Hamlet’s death the world will become hopeless. At the end of Hamlet in Tivoli, there is not any salvation. It told resignedly: there will be ever worse successors.

Kerényi is a Hungarian director. Tim Carroll is English. Kerényi put on stage a traditional Hamlet, Carroll a rule-breaker one. Anyway, there are common characteristics of their performances. At the important point of the performance: at the end of them. Both of them give the ending words to Horatio. In Madách, István Kelemen counts the time, Róbert Kardos in Bárka, stands as a historical witness. Hamlet dies standing in both Madách and Bárka too. In Madách, the others, who were stabbed, poisoned, just lean to the wall. They do not lie everywhere on the ground. They remain on standby. They are alive on standby. When we need them, they will wake up and step in action. The applause is the part of the performance. The killed dead people lean to the wall. Then they bow smilingly, happily: Rosencrantz-Guildenstern with a little clown joke, the ghost of Hamlet’s father makes us playfully remember his face, covered with his hand. The actress, who performs Gertrude thanks for the claps with a batiste handkerchief, kept in her right hand like Pavarotti, with a huge prima donna-like assoluta-curtsy, then raise gracefully the white handkerchief into her lap of her velvet dress. The actors run out freshly, then happily back: There will be another resurrection!

The dead people of Bárka do not pollute with their laying bodies the stage. Hamlet freezes by the wall as someone, who is counted out in a child game. He is a toy dead one. It is a theatrical trial deposit from the real death.

In Madách, those who have fallen lean in line on the wall. Zoltán Balázs in Bárka stands on his foot between the participated viewers, he is similar to someone, who can go on with his fighting anytime against the power. He forms an ending between two directors, who are totally different from each other, from the point of worldview, theatre acceptance and nationality. He states something involuntarily, which is in the air: maybe... than.

Studio of Madách Theatre - Shakespeare: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. (Premiere: 29. October 2005.) Director: Imre Kerényi.

Bárka Theatre - Shakespeare: Hamlet – Theatrical experiment. (Premiere: 16. December 2005.) Director: Tim Carroll.

Chamber Theatre Budapest, Tivoli - Shakespeare: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. (Premiere: 21. January 2006.) Director: János Sándor.

Péter Gál Molnár, Mozgó Világ, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

We should watch our favourite performance a dozen times, for thousands of reasons it would have different effect on us because of personal and other reasons. The theatre is the art of the moment, the of the here and now. Despite all these, most of the performances have a “score”, which is formed by the director and his partners, from which is has not use to differ much. To tell it differently: the troupe and the director usually try to repeat more punctually, and make us remember again and again the untouchable, once in a lifetime moments. What would happen if the actors do not try to get rid of the accidental and unexpected things, but make them to be the basic of their performance on stage, to be a quality, which define and reform the viewers and partners’ thinking? Tim Carroll tries to answer this question with his Hamlet performance in the Fencing Hall of Bárka Theatre.

The performance defines itself as a theatrical experiment, but they could write theatrical therapy under the title. The director has healing aim to free not only the drama, but also the troupe and the viewers too from the clichés, which were in them deeply, to emphasise (above?) its occasional nature, he can free it from the layers of expectations then dress the text up unexpectedly in shining formal clothes. To be punctual, he is not the director, who does it all, but the public, who is with them in the same place, and the actors together. Carroll does not push himself into the lights of reflectors all the time with a new interpretation of Hamlet, which wants to delete arrogantly all the others before it, but he indicates, that there is not any like this. Only one thing exists: the performance that evening, for which we, the viewers bring the properties and music, and we decide the cast and the place too. What “remains”: János Arany’s wonderful text, which can create the beneficial tension of the distance between the own time of the masterpiece and our time with its own timeless phrases. (Add to it, that because of the so-called fixed text we immediately have the answer to the question of from where to where inside the drama. The question is about the how.) So the director eliminates all circumstances that can be handled as given and sure, to give place to the...

To what? To the relieved, joyful, but not shallow, on the contrary: to the play with relative power, which requires deep, great concentration, to become the real meeting between the actor and the role. He frees the actors from all the usual turns of many accidental things, from whom the director expects exceptional brainwork and extraordinary forms of relationships with the viewers. When we enter the Fencing Hall, in the middle of Judit Csanádi’s waving structures of podiums (which is the stage and the auditorium together) a great amount of chairs are waiting for us: all of us can choose one of them and sit there we want (we mustn’t sit on the carpets, these form the main power lines of the performing area). There is a white cloth stretched above us, there is a great round hole in its middle. There must be the sky full of starts over it, as well as in the Globe. The actors are in the viewers’ lines, who are sharing four to six roles each evening, they are in civil clothes, they are already there, and a draw will decide their role for that evening.

The only exception is the main role: Zoltán Balázs, who has become well-known nowadays as a director, performs again – maybe this is the biggest pleasure of the evening (the young director-actor’s ritual performances, which are counted till the edge in all their gestures, according to their method, are not so far from this Hamlet, as we would think first). Zoltán Balázs is great, not only in the usage of ad hoc objects in the place (a crown of thorns or a plastic rubbish bag, jumping rope or mobile phone, they are all reformed in his hand). He always has enough impressive energy to become the engine of the performance, the indicator of the sweeping actions and – maybe too many times – he is the controller of them too. That way it is understandable and indicated that his role is not doubled: his joyful, wild, childish Hamlet is the shining star in the middle of the universe of the performance, the others’ place and function are defined according to him one by one.

Of course, the cast of the evening, which is written accidentally, influence mostly the viewers’ experience of that day, and from now on I talk about those two performances, which I watched. Olga Varjú, as Gertrud without any attributes of the queen is a royal phenomenon. Zoltán Seress first became an immaterial, unearthly creature because of the African mask, he held in front of him, the second time he was a strict ruler with strong arms, who would convince Laertes about his truth as a sumo fighter. Attila Egyed was a jovial Claudius first, then an ominous ghost of a father with his silent wandering. Béla Gados’ Polonius was pedantic, a meddlesome minister of the state, he was always in a bad place at a good time. Kinga Mezei’s Ophelia was buried to Vivaldi’s aria in the first evening, the next time she was the tyrannical Fortinbras (Gabi Varga was her pales partner both times). In case of József Czintos, as a gravedigger, we could feel that he learnt in another school, his comedy with louder voice could fix itself into the structure of the performance. Tibor Mészáros, university student, as the friend, Horatio than as the enemy, Laertes could be extremely powerful.

The empty statement, according to which the whole world is a stage, became direct reality in case of Hamlet by Bárka: there are not any barriers between the viewers and the actors, the interactive adventure can turn theatre into close, sensual experience. The fulfilled effect is changing a lot from evenings to evenings here of course. While on the first performance, which I watched, close to the premiere, the joy of the carefree game, the magnificence of the free experiments remained defining all thorough it. During the second one, two months later, I could feel, partly covered individual conflicts during the really true-like fighting or in case of some harsher actions, which could hurt the other actor or the viewer. Apart from all these, the later performance could work with similar effects as the earlier one, but it warned me from close for that obvious possibility that even this wonderful theatrical therapy, which could give exceptional experiences for most of the viewers, could have unexpected side effects...

Tamás Jászay, Kritika, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

What is Hamlet by Shakespeare? There are important figures, scenes, quotes, five acts long „to be or not to be”: so much previous knowledge (or false knowledge), subjective- blurred memories, preconception. We remember a figure with a skull in his hand.

It is a kind of collective knowledge by viewers, a so called, canonical association of Hamlet. So, any Hamlet performances and Hamlet interpretations have to deal with these associations: they have to use them, or even over write them totally. It works like that as we are talking about a classical drama. The classical ones are made by time, the canon is made by its constancy in time, permanency and traditions make them work. Tim Carroll has made a special theatrical experiment, when he works with Hamlet to grab the theatrical here and now. His aim is to make one performance, which will never be repeated that way, he does it with different properties and musical materials every evening (the viewers bring with themselves different objects as properties and music each evening, and it is decided with their help that which actors will play the roles that day), with different cast (with the possibility of it at least), Tim Carroll peals down all those layers of interpretation and appearance on stage from Hamlet, which have deposited on it over the years. The pure text remains, the dramatical situation and the possibility for the actors, who perform, (through them the viewers too) to put everything in quotation marks, to show them, to quote them and to reflect on them, which can be connected to Hamlet in the viewers’ thoughts. If they want it.

It is a game with Hamlet itself, and with our prejudices about it, with our previous knowledge. Everybody, who enters the place of performance, choses a chair and sits down, even with the fact that they search for properties and leave home: these all are parts of the game. We know punctually what kind of game we are watching, but we do not adjust to it, when we have to choose properties. It becomes fact, when everybody has to raise up the object he brings, well...there are not so many swords, armours and sculls in the air. There are not any sculls and edged weapons. But there are body lotions, shopping bags, ruler, balloon, banana, map instead, just to mention some of them. It is a provoked provocation. It is a statement of participation in the game: that yes, you can play with me, we can start it. So the “Hamlet-like” game-like thing.

The viewers’ place in the area and game, it is the combination of attraction of a circus and traditional theatrical situations, it is a mental trick of an artist (by the performers and viewers too). The viewers’ attention cannot get lower, as in every moment the possibility of getting into the game is given. The viewers’ reactions become fertile parts of the performance at some points (wilful “provocation”: sitting on the lap, using cream, feeding with chocolate, kissing on hand, leaving of shoes and continuous, very clear eye contact).

The structure of the game is formed by the viewers: on the stage, which is built from chairs, free paths of carpets, lower and higher podiums, the place is a little bit similar to an arena because of the stretched light cloth above it. The close contact is determining all through the performance. The performance is going on next to and around me, for the following of the changing places we need an active look, as there are not any stage lights, which can control our look, neither a curtain or a revolving stage, which can hide some moments.

There is continuous reflection from the viewers: the well-known text is given, the structure of roles, the arc of the story. Above it, the story is too well-known, and the special kind of performance does not let (or make harder) us get lost into the whole story, the entire transfiguration (the orders by the master of ceremonies bring us back, to tell us where we can put our chairs, which part of the stage must be free). If there is anything, we can get lost in, then it is the game, into given moments of the performance into some kind of micro situations. The theatrical situation is thematic in the performance itself. The viewers are searching for chairs for themselves, with the game or rock-paper-scissors they decide which roles, which actors play that evening, they have to change their places by acts. Before the first scene of the act I have to raise up the object, I have taken with myself, which has been in my hand, I can see the actors, who are not on stage, who are sitting between the viewers and waiting for their next scene, they are sitting there more as actors, than as their roles. Zoltán Balázs is sitting next to me on the podium then, and not Hamlet, Gábor Nagypál is standing in the corner, he is not Horatio. So during this performance the viewers must know (and know it well) that here they can see a performance, which is born in the given moment (which uses anyway the drama, entitled Hamlet, its characters, situations and text as a material).

There is the wonderful dissonance in it, that sometimes the miniature duets are in intimate closeness (two characters’ meeting and dialogue), they have very strong effects. Maybe because of the physical closeness, or the improvising nature, its theatrical nature (its stage-like nature) is pushed back, and during most of the scenes, the suggestibility of two people’s meeting, its intensity (humour, momentary, tragedy) remain the dominant experience.

The playing method, which is similar to situation practices, can create a vividly changing and changeable, live speaking like text on stage from the fixed text. In each performance we can listen to the same dialogues, which are simple dialogues anyway (there are not any stresses, choreographies of dialogues, which can work from performances to performances, there is no use to fix them, as the characters – except for Hamlet – are changed from performances to performances). The stresses and the dynamic are similar to normal speech, and it lets some kind of “border crossing” too; for example the repeating of a sentence, which can be heard just once in a drama (To be or not to be?), with different stresses (question, reaction, exclamation: it is similar to an improvised opinion poll from the point of view of Hamlet).

The classical text can “transfigure”, become more colourful, and it is strongly connected to the actual surrounding (to the place, partners, objects). The hidden meanings of a word, expression (all of them they can have) are there parallel because all of them, any of them, some of them can be brought into the performance through the given elements of the properties, which changes from performances to performances. It is a “clearer” text that way, it is more understandable, it is that kind of variation of the text, which becomes “more up to date” by the way of its pronunciation.

The special use of properties is a basic thing in Tim Carroll’s performances. The aim is: to “bring the actors into situations” with the help of objects (and music). But what can be exactly the objects on the stage? What is an object for? What is its aim? Is it there to make it authentic? Is it there for pure illustration? To raise illusion? To form counterpoints?

With the usage of properties, which would not be suitable there, makes all possibilities appear together. The raise of illusion (that the scene is going on as it would in reality too, if...) can happen only as a result of lucky constellation. It is up to the actors’ creativity, that how much they can make me, the viewer to believe that the given-chosen object in the given scene is necessary and reasonable. For example, that for Polonius’ dead body a big porcelain vase is the best hiding place, as an urn, which is for holding ashes in it. (it is going on a working well in the scene, where Ophelia goes mad) Those properties are more common, which are used as tools of jokes, where irony, humour and counterpointing work. Claudius is there with a toy snake scarf in his neck and Horatio with an umbrella with blue- Donald duck on it in the scene of guards in the cemetery. Well it is a real comedy. There are jokes, and funny out winking. As we are playing “Hamlet-like games”. The snake is similar to a stole anyway, the umbrella is the best tool to protect ourselves and a hiding place too. Why not?

This later one is a very important question? Why not? If there is a time, when it is not (so much) ... Is there a moment when this out winking cannot work, or it is not worth using? It is imaginable. But for it we have to understand more thoroughly that how comedy can affect in this special way of performance. What does a comic moment do in a tragic drama? Does it put out of joint or counterpoint productively? Do the comic elements make weaker or in contrast to it, they prepare and strengthen the tragic situation? As I was laughing. I admit, that I did more times. Isn’t it “unnatural” during a Hamlet performance? To put jokes aside, of course it is not (Shakespeare theatre was entertaining by its nature, just to hold viewers’ attention; either with bloodbath, murder, intrigue, betrayal). Does the cap deform Hamlet’s figure in me? Do the trainers do the same with Claudius’ character, or the jumping rope does it with Gertrud’s character? I do not think so. It is some kind of demystification, of course (of the story, and of the figures), but it works; the humour (can) create open area for tragedy. The dramatic moment after the relaxed laugh can affect even more strongly and deeply. It is a sensitive balance: meanwhile actors move more easily toward comedy because of the circumstances (take into consideration the umbrella with the Donald duck and the toy snake), and making laugh is a really grateful task. Because of it, during the (more) dramatic scenes we need a very accurate and very authentic performance, the actors have to create the silence, the hold back breath on the auditorium for the serious moments, or the performance moves toward the self-serving entertainment. When they can create this special balance, then the scenes, the performance have a special dynamic, rhythm, continuous intensity.

Freedom as actors, but obligation to the text: it is a special combination. It is pure game, which needs exaggerated and concentrated presence by actors. From some points of view the performance is divided, it is structured by the changing of positions between the scenes (it brakes the continuity of the performance), so the rules of the game are marked clearly. The sense of “playing Hamlet” is stressed strongly: the scenes work more as miniature situation practices, in which everybody gets an object and a fixed part of the text, a role (which they cannot leave), then they have to use all these. There are only a few objects, and properties, which can come back from scenes to scenes (the performance can work the best, if they can make some objects to be a motive, connect that kind of meaning to them, which can make them return into the game again). All of these strengthen the fact that some situations are similar to special closed improvising universe in the performance, where a part of the text has to be made alive in a way. These independent (able to work on their own or not) scenes can be connected like mosaics, to form a general impression at the end of the performance, but the basic of the play is evidently the situation, the dialogue of the two.

This method of performance is a great freedom and responsibility too. It is freedom, as the actors direct mostly themselves and each other in these scenes. It is responsibility, as the actors really direct themselves and each other during these scenes. Yes, it may be the most interesting point of the performance. If the time can get out of joint anytime, then this is that point for sure. The unspoken rule of situation practices, that the more dominant actor controls. The hierarchy between the director and actor can be formed during a minute of the performance, for the sake of the scene one of them has to submit himself to the other’s will. It is clear. The actor, who performs Polonius, cannot laugh, cannot leave the role, cannot get angry, cannot leave the scene, and cannot say that “it is a silly thing, let’s start it again”, even if the actor, who is Hamlet, in his mad-like behaviour squeezes a lemon on his head, then put its skin into his mouth. The game is about it. The scene is excellent. The cooperation is essential; if only one of the two actors believes that the paper handkerchief is a letter to Ophelia “In reality”, the other one would play (imagine it) that it is a poisonous white flower, then the scene must die, and the viewers would not understand anything. These things do not happen of course, as the actors are professionals. But it can happen easily, that an idea does not work perfectly, an actor can over-direct himself and his partner. Because of the spontaneous usage of properties, the over thinking of some scenes, or the nice forcing of an original bad idea can make the performance weaker. All of these, are nothing else, just less well-made improvisation, but the performance has to go on after them too. The actors have to know, how can they move out of a less successful part of a scene, so that it seems to be very natural, and they have to perform it all along to a new scene, where they have to make a totally new idea work.

This can be the most important thing in Tim Carroll’s performance. This “Hamlet-like” game is such a strange game, that there are not, there cannot be any experienced participants / players, as there are any experienced viewers too. It is here and now. One final scene, two actors, and a hot pepper – for example. It is once in a lifetime, it is unrepeatable. It is pure game.

Dóra Juhász, Criticai Lapok, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

They perform improvised Hamlet by Shakespeare in Bárka Theatre. The viewers draw the roles before the performances between the alternative prepared members of the troupe, only the main character, Zoltán Balázs is constant. The actors are wearing their own dresses. Judit Csanádi, the set designer formed a common auditorium and stage from the structure of elevating podiums on both sides and backwards. The viewers can choose their own chairs from the others, they can put them where they want, they just have to leave free to the all sides running ways, which are marked by carpets. They can sit anywhere, they can become participant of the performance, the actors are moving in front of, behind and between the viewers. The order of sitting changes by acts, according to the original division of five acts, a draw marks the place of the next act, who are “in way”, will move backwards. According to the previous wish we bring objects and CDs with us; the later ones we give to the “music master”, to Béla Faragó, who plays them meanwhile (if he wants), we hold the objects in our hands, or put them next to us, so that the actors (if they want) can use “play them into” some scenes as properties.

I have watched the performance twice, to review its organisation and summarize its résumé. The blind luck chose both times the same Claudius (Zoltán Seress), the same Ophelia (Gabriella Varga), the same Ghost / Actor King (Attila Egyed), the same Horatio (Gábor Nagypál) and the same Fortinbras (Kinga Mezei) too. Gertrud was performed by Kriszta Szorcsik first, the second time by Olga Varjú; the other evening they performed the Actor Queen. In the doubled roles of Polonius and the First gravedigger, I could see József Czintos and Béla Gados first in that order, than they changed the roles. The situation was similar in case of the Second gravedigger (Anikó Varga) and Ostrick (Kristóf Horváth). As Laertes, Tibor Mészáros was followed by Róbert Kardos and the later one was Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern?) too as well as Erik Ollé and Tibor Mészáros. In case of these roles there were four, in the others even more possibilities to choose from, so I am not sure about Tibor Pásztor, Tamás Törőcsik, Gábor Szabó, Richárd Bodor, Réka Császár and Kamilla Fátyol.

From this can come that theatrical historian decision that Hamlet is a drama of one role. Which, of course, is not true at all, but it has a basis that – I make is easier by intention – Hamlet “is mainly about” Hamlet, the main character “plays everybody off the stage”, he is in the centre of the power plant of the drama, everything “goes around him”, all gets meaning in connection with him, which cannot be said about, for example King Lear. It is mentioned as a counterpoint from this point of view, it is similar in its “weight” but its conflicts are more balanced. In Hamlet, he is one, who mostly performs, who “to put an antic disposition on” not long after the beginning of the play, with his changings, jumps, ripostes – with his so called improvisation – he surprises, puts into unexpected situations, makes fun of, sometimes insults most of the character. So it is very suitable for that, which Tim Carroll, the director has found out. The question is that what is good for Hamlet, is it good for Hamlet himself too. Carroll does not want to take any (pre)conception (less harshly: interpretation) into the performance – “I am the conception” as Miklós Gábor said, when he performed Hamlet – he does not want to decide in advance that Hamlet should be about this or that (“in present time”), it is enough for him, if the drama “talks on behalf of itself”, it talks about its inner relationships in front of the audience. In front of the audience of the given day, coming from the fact, that all audience, performance are different, so mainly the Hamlet of that day exists, or as Brook told it once, the performance can be performed just once.

It is obvious that in Bárka we cannot enter the same Hamlet twice. The role of eventuality is obvious. Above all, of the objects, which were got from the viewers. In one of the performance, the letter: a roll of toilet paper or a string as the paper of telegraph, in the other one, the mobile- and video message. Yorick skull can be the tennis ball or a hat: the earlier one can be thrown up onto the cloth that is stretched above on the ceiling, the later one can be put on anybody’s head. They can duel with a rope or with the biting of snacks. There are properties, which work well, and there are those, which do not. With a tape measure or a headed ruler you can measure (figuratively too) a person, or you can push him into a vice too. A plastic bag of soil (if it is there by accident) is good to throw away, when they are talking about: “Foul deeds will rise, / Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.". When Czintos / Polonius instructs Laertes with the phrases of “No, this also” not only by words, but by a deodorant sprays his armpit, that is a wise joke. When the usage of a shoetree results in the taking of a viewers’ shoe that has not had any meaning at that time. For the second time, I brought tendentiously a mirror (it is a common metaphor in the play) and it worked. Gábor Nagypál took it from my hand then Zoltán Balázs took from his hand and made his partners swear to be silent with it. After it, he reflected the “time out of joint” into the ceiling.

The object cannot stand in for a person. The closeness of viewers can be useful if they can get into real connection with them. An actor on the auditorium means a challenge to address automatically the flattering sentences to them about actors. It was good to me too when – whether it was ironical or not – I got into my face that "...the censure of which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others." The moment can be made honest and intimate when they get a viewer into their neck, sit into their lap, sit next to them to talk to them, and this become meaningful that way; Balázs once managed to do it. The other time, a viewer, who was said to be Polonius, answered spontaneously to the question: “do you have a daughter” that “no, I do not”, and then it stopped there, as Shakespeare has not text to it. During the monologue of “To be or not to be”, Balázs made a viewer to tape him around, then he also tided Ophelia to himself with it, so tightly that Gabriella Varga could not get out of it (neither as an actress) and they could finish the scene in time only with a life threatening fall. It was Hamlet-like in a different way the other day, when Hamlet became drunken from a bottle of vine (or he just played it), in the same place, Ophelia made bitterly fun of him, then Claudius, who thought about madness of love, could pointed at the bottle and told "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go”.

The examples and variations are endless, but the lessons can be learnt from it. One of them, that improvisation as the possibility of game is endless only for Hamlet, and Zoltán Balázs could use it well, he pushes himself really energetically into the game, he enjoys it too, he can do it too – it is his performance.

The others – in any roles – are strongly limited. But it is not useless for them too, it works as a public rehearsal, with unexpected changes of partners, with unexpected reactions, with fresh ability to concentrate, which can work as a relieving breeze in the mostly complacent, cliché favoured, lazy practice of Hungarian theatre making, which is built mostly on overuse patrons and patterns of success. Of course, for a good performance, they would fix the best solutions on the rehearsals, and keeps the vivid feeling of its birth there every day in its fixed form too, above all from the point of view of the formal – ideal – conceptual whole, which can summarize the spontaneous parts. But, that would be real art then.

Until then I have welcomed the noble challenge, as we would do it with a stranger.

Tamás Koltai, Élet és Irodalom, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The previously printed program promises about Hamlet, directed by Tim Carroll in Bárka Theatre that we can see a different performance each time. It makes me interested so I would watch it once more. And because we have got used to almost recognisable interpretation, we would watch it third times too; we tried out if we could find something similar; we are looking for the previous two evenings, at least one of them – but for nothing.

Tim Carroll works regularly in Globe Theatre in London; it is well known, that he working method is mostly influenced by its characteristics: nothing separates us from the actors, it is never dark there, not even half shadow, there are not any reflectors, there is a common work-lighting in the place. In Bárka Theatre the performance in in the Fencing Hall; we get a chair, and we can put it where we want. There is only one restriction that on the carpet, which is running as stairs and the floor that goes down towards the wall covered with carpets too, must be let free – so we are almost sitting between the radiuses of an ellipse. At least, at the beginning of the performance. The place is changing: a viewer draws from a hat that where they perform the next scene, so where we have to take our chairs not to be in way; if we are fortunate, we get a place from where we do not have to always turn our head here and there. For the second time I experienced, that if I had to it was not so bad, but who got bored with it, would miss some important look and movement. The more easy-going people from the beginning, the lazier ones after a while, do not regret it a lot – for some of them the actors’ voice performance is enough from their behind.

The troupe can never know in advance, what will punctually happen. I am a little ashamed of it, I admit, that first I have thought that the same thing is written on all the sheet of papers, which are in the hat, that appears during the intervals, as some scenes goes better in some places, than in the other one. But there were not any tricks. The same thing happens with the cast: the viewers can decide which actors will play the roles, in the evening – except from Hamlet, the roles are doubled, or even multiplied – and because I did not listen carefully for the first time, I thought they have not decided the bet before, but they did...

After all these background I was not seriously surprised, that there was a time, when Claudius talked only to me, then Ophelia held my neighbour’s hands, once Rosencrantz hugged my chair, and I heard that his stomach made noises. Everyone could play, who would like to. We have to take a CD or any other object with us – there was everything there: toothbrush, teddy bear, metronome; they mostly use them, maybe a short part can be played from your music, or your tennis ball becomes the scull of Yorick. There are not many sets. Judit Csanádi raises a black curtain around us and there is a white cloth above us, there is a big hole in the middle, and her invention must be the uneven floor too. The actors are performing in tracksuit, T-shirt, trainers.

It is a brave enterprise to take the viewers, who are used to the proscenium stage and a tangible conception, into this kind of situation; meanwhile, of course Hamlet does not have one authentic reading. The playing method, which makes us laughing loudly many times, can distract us easily from the story, and from the one or even more lessons that the performance has, which they may be able to tell us. Are there any signed milestones, if there are, how the troupe of Bárka Theatre, who are excellent in improvisation, can show them, during their performance, which requires bigger and different kind of concentration by actors? I could not find it out. During the third evening, I lost my string, which I have weaved so carefully during the first two ones.

The aim of the performance is it: the viewers can watch a different Hamlet every evening.

Sometimes Polonius lets his son, Laertes go to Paris with a hug, then sometimes he blows deodorant, which he gets from the viewers, on his armpit, the third time the son did not accept the love from his father. Hamlet sometimes frightens the praying Claudius with a plastic snake, then put tea bag into his mouth, or imitates with a chain of pearls, how he can strangle him. After the “To be or not to be” one day the prince tries to make Ophelia drink red vine – already a little bit drunken; then holds them around with tape, with the help of a viewer; the third evening he paints the girl’s face with a lip stick. And so on – only the final performance can raise border against the possibilities. The question is that, whether the different solutions point towards the same aim: how does Polonius react to Laertes’ behaviour; does Claudius realise and know what Hamlet plans to do against him. Does Ophelia try to get out of the situation, which is uncomfortable for her, if yes, she does it, because she never loves the seemingly mad prince, or she turns away from him now. I have no idea. Of course, I have impressions, some kind of them, but obviously, they are mine, so they are radically subjective.

I am sure that: the troupe of Bárka Theatre has made a special performance. The actors, almost all of them, hold our attention with tight performances.

We can see that Zoltán Balázs feels himself well in Hamlet’s role, with a little bit fewer lisps, he would be more authentic for me, but his performance is memorable anyway.

As Claudius, I felt Zoltán Seress a greater ruler than Attila Egyed, but he is a more ghost-like Ghost and a more actor-like Actor King. Olga Varjú’s Gertrud is an active volcano, Kriszta Szorcsik’s is a little bit more sleeping, she is about to erupt, none of them is undangerous.

I have loved the most Gabi Varga. She is a fascinating Ophelia, who is strong in her performance, she is a frightening one; not only Hamlet, but she plays the mad too. Because of her social status she does not have the possibility to revenge her father’s death against the royal court, she possibly commits suicide, but someone helps her for sure; in contrary to it, Kinga Mezei “becomes mad” in reality. As Fortinbras, both of them are patient, and sorry to give command, the volley is mostly against the new rule, the new order – against him.

József Czintos as Polonius is lovable “good old man”, he is without all evilness, Béla Gados emphasises the father’s more annoying characteristic.

My Horatio is for sure, Gábor Nagypál, who is finally horrified by Hamlet, he is ready to go with him to death just because of well behaviour, my nice Guildenstern is a little bit clod, Róbert Kardor, who is well intentioned, he is not a traitor at all, and the calmest, but the most passionate Laertes is Tibor Mészáros. From the other, I likes the most Anikó Varga’s presence as the good Ostrick, and Réka Császár as the Captain.

The “Hamlet in a pocket” is a good game and it is worth trying.

Zoltán Karuczka, Színház, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Tim Carroll is a theatrical “gambler”: he entrusted his performance, Hamlet, mostly on Fortuna. The performance of Bárka Theatre starts with the act that the viewers draw the cast of the evening. The actors know at that moment, who they are going to perform. They can use as properties, those objects, which the viewers bring with themselves, even the soundtracks are chosen from the viewers’ CDs.

Only those dare to “gamble” with Shakespeare, who trust deeply in theatre and in one another. The seemingly lazy and light performance requires hard concentration. The actors have to study more roles, and balance with the mostly improvised scenes between the shows of market places, happenings and tragedies. Their sense of proportion is excellent. However, in the “theatre of trust” there is not a settled dramaturgy, neither a counted effect with accuracy of an engineer. Instead of the feats of the technique of stage only the performance remains. The ghost of Hamlet’s father arrives on a wooden toy horse, which he rents from a viewer, the gravedigger calls a hat as Yorick. All of it can become a collection of cheap jokes, but it will not. This drama is authentic, extraordinary entertaining and moving.

In a naked theatre, everything is adventure and fantasy. It is cited childhood. The actors are walking between the viewers: they sit next to us, talk to us. The misery of Denmark is our inner, common business. Hamlet tells his monologue while hugging a lady’s shoulder: “To be or not to be?” The gesture can be intrusive, but it is natural in this world of game. Hamlet is the only role, which is not for “hire”: always Zoltán Balázs performs the prince. He is the only stable point of the performances, which are changing from evening to evening. He is a theatrical origin. For his performance, he has received lately the Miklós Gábor Award of the best Shakespeare actor of the year. Besides him, we can see among the others, Zoltán Seress, József Czintos, Olga Varjú in the changing roles.

Tim Carroll is the main director of Globe Theatre. He has tried his improvising experiments in different theatres of the world. In Bárka, Hamlet is his third performance.

Zsuzsanna Sándor, 168 óra, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)