It is a very erotic theatre. However, the actors do not get naked. Except for Ákos Orosz: he pulls down his trousers as king Pipo and suffers from constipation while he is squatting. The usual sexual teasing is missing too. Fortunately, we cannot even see the often imitation of any sexual activities. In the narrow cellar room of Bárka Theatre the air is shaking from eroticism, where Maladype Theatre performs Leonce and Lena by Georg Büchner, on a Japanese like ballet mat, in front of bamboo sticks.

Eight actors are in T-shirts with short and long sleeves, with salivary-like black – it is tight at the bottom part, a really buggy at the top – uniformed trousers. The generous usage of clothes let them pupated if they pull it up, they can use it as a bandage, they can even touch between their partners’ leg to put away the ruffle of the salivary, as they would push away the branches of a tree to see better. The outside characteristics makes us remember the Indonesian religious theatre, the primitive tricks of the Balinese theatre, which inspired Antonin Artaud too. It is a very erotic performance. It is made by the eight performers’ connection and by their concentrated looks. By the intensity of their presence. The roles and genders, which are mixed as cards, strengthen the confused world of Büchner’s comedy. They are arguing with Leonce’s sentence: “Oh my God, how many women do we need to sing through the whole scale of love? ... I turn myself out twenty-four times every day as a glove.”

The performance has biological effect too. They are young and show their hidden secrets of their personalities as they are ready to play (to those, who have eyes to see). From them the most irresistible one is Katalin Simkó, who is glorious. I seemed to be prejudiced in favour of her, however she did not convince me less when in an excellent exam performance of Brecht, in the role of a mother in The Wild Duck in the Katona Theatre, as Hedvig, who is admired by many. In Büchner her look sticks up as a dagger those she looks at. Or she melts into the other’s body gently. There is huge power in the small blonde girl. She can whenever move her magical power to destroy a big city too. She can brings up easily from herself the opposite contents. Her partners do the same. The performance is built on it. They are closed into a well-made or bad structure of cast. They do not play only one role. All eight of them play the whole play. They know its turns, thoughts, hidden words. It there is a wish they can enter any role. Zoltán Balázs, the director, encourages the viewers to edit the performance, do not believe it to be an eternal one, which cannot be changed, as it is called to be the reading of the director by professional writers. They should play together with the performance. They should be interested in the other interpretation and formation of the same scene. The complete performance, which is free to be change as a puzzle, should be built on strict, unmovable, final worked out variations, and permutations of play.

Balázs jumped over himself. He jumped more freely his own top as a director. Up until now he has worked with plays, which avoid the stage. Büchner – however, he is out of the so called European order of drama literature – is the first play, which has national theatrical historical background too. Of course, Balázs’ Büchner is original that way, that it avoids traditions. It would not be proper it we compare it to Tim Caroll’s Hamlet, just because it gives possibilities of alternative variations. The interpretation of Büchner goes deeper. Instead of the scholar-like explanation of the connections of changing partners to one another, the concentration, the inner attention and the attention to their partners, they let the viewers in confused human-social relationships. We forget our reading experiences before. Whether we have seen the play before. Have we know anything about it or meet the first time. We get into the centre of human circuits and accurate attentions. And we follow the performers’ attention. They guide our attention.

Gábor Thurzó’s translation is valid from 1955 for 53 years, it is fresh, with modern words. It grabs me even with its trimmed, shorter poetical accuracy.

Ákos Orosz owns the whole scale on the stage from the childish smile joyfulness over the used and disciplined concentration, which is aimfully applied objectivity similarly to a set, until the heroic role. He is a soloist and then serves subordinately as a side character, or an effect on the stage. Ádám Tompa can express himself plastically even with bare fingers standing upside down. He articulates so happily with his fingers, that he is more understandable than many who cry on the stage. If he is put on his feet from his head, he takes place in the group in doubled version. He creates distance for himself with a repressed smile.

Éva Bakos, the hard worker of amateur theatres for many years and of Maladype, shines in her private scene. She performs Leonce’s monologue by popular demand or as a result of the director’s tricky game. She performs with sign language the main character’s monologue, which we have heard before, to those who do not understand these signs. It is a grate artistic trick. My only question is that how can she sign the Nankeen trousers?

Zsolt Páll is the strictly serious man between the youngsters. He is emphasised by his Swedish language knowledge and his authentic Transylvanian dialect, when joke comes out from his dark mood. The large-bodied man goes easily on all fours, as a child from the nursery school, who climbs out of the cot. They have changed the German child song into a more joyful one. They cheer it in German, holding each other with checked infantilism. Here I should note that the songs, they use in the performance, are all very fresh and anachronistic, if we take care of Büchner’s era instead of ours. Kornél Mogyoró with his percussion set gives rhythm and calming ending to the play. Swedish, Transylvanian idioms, German, sign language. They make the properties speak. The bamboo stick can be weapon, penis, carrying chair, monument, cross, instrument and a tool that hits the rhythm. They handle them perfectly. They give sound to the silent objects.

The performance speaks all language. Mostly the language of theatre. On the level of a mother, father tongue. Leonce and Lena is not an experimental theatre. It is a well-made theatre.

MGP, szinhaz.hu, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Zoltán Balázs’ (and Judit Gombár’s) creamy white stage, which is bordered by slanted fixed bamboo sticks is an inspired place: it place for thinking, the hugging of bodies, and their fighting. The performers – four men and four women – are in black slimmed tops and buggy black trousers, and they take place in the game bare feet: all through the pink feet, ankles, fingers „are playing” as well in the light area, as the arms, faces, the looks connected to one another.

The acoustic world of the performance is created by Kornél Mogyoró, the musician, who is also in black dress, he gets place at the edge of the stage: the exotic percussion instruments, which have special voices, which he plays, he can close the actual scene shortly with stress. The rite and meditation can widen the performance into the place of nice touches and harmony. There are not any sets and properties on the pure stage, just the longer and shorter bamboo sticks, which can have many functions, they can embody sometimes forest, weapon, podium, throne or even a phallus.

The basic frame of the performance is drown by the virtuoso movements for us: the performers show just episodes from Büchner’s play, and the introducing commentary by the director can connect each scenes. Meanwhile the performance was advertised with the fact that the actors would “fight” with each other for each scenes, there was nothing like this in the performance, which I saw. Instead the viewers’ wishes and asks were built in: by strong encouragement from the auditorium “orders” came to play another version of some scenes, and shortly came out that all the performers know all the roles of the play as their mother tongue.

What did we see in the experimental theatre of Maladype? Some role-play exercises with the usage of Gábor Thurzó’s translation of well-known texts? Some kind of special symbiosis of the sounding texts and acrobatic movements, which can create intensively a picture of a coherent world. It seemed to be obvious anyway, that the texts, actions, movements are not in the usual relation with one another: the order of sounds and movements can create their own world, speech has subordinate role. Anyway, the performance widens the borders of human speech too: many sequences of speech become into squeaky and whining animal sounds, magical signs of tribe rites or deformed sign language. Hermina Fátyol tells in Arabic language prince Leonce’s well-known monologue in the repeated scene; another character (Zsolt Páll) talks with emphasised dialect, and puts grotesque nature into another scale of scenes. The dramatic text is counterpointed sometimes, then it is stressed by intensive physical work: the power and drive of the performance is given by acrobatic movements, connection, leaving of bodies. This performance can be similar to acrobatic trick of a circus, as the performers do with lightness and airily movements, which require the hardest, the most complex – intensive physical power and strict discipline. The harmonised actions finally always form some kind of composition, which reports about human relations, which are lived through intensively, and about feelings. It is about the fighting and merging of bodies and transfiguration.

We can see a theatre with biological base, which is wonderfully sensual. It carries us away with itself, enchants us, even if not all moments of each scenes can have suddenly obviously evident meaning. The strong troupe of Maladype with Zoltán Balázs’ leading have been making experiments with new, organic theatrical language for a while, and now as they use Büchner’s tale as the base for it they can go on so far with the language formation. The visual picture of the performance is really unique and artistic: it is an intensive game of bodies – on the border of the pure sensuality and pure philosophy.

As episodes are going on, the play is filled with charmingly gentle eroticism and grotesque humour: “the scene of urination”, which is played by long bamboo sticks, is irresistibly funny, it uses tools surreally, the shacking and tricky operation of the polygonal throne, which is built with crossed laid sticks, the grotesque biological forms of the squatting male body (Ákos Orosz), all of them are well-worked out scenes, which can form stressed pictures. All the performers – Ákos Orosz, Zoltán Papp, Zsolt Páll, Ádám Tompa, Éva Bakos, Hermina Fátyol, Kamilla Fátyol, Katalin Simkó – take part in the production with devotion, discipline and with extreme effort. Which is an example of the fact as well, that persistent searching of form and formation of language can create not only mental cohesion but a community too.

Dezső Kovács, Criticai Lapok, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The master’s, who died young, second – from the finished ones the last one – drama according to Zoltán Balázs’ words is about theatre making. We do not argue with him, as the performance of Maladype is really about this, it talks about theatre(making). And do not with only a few words.

The area of the performance, which was designed by Judit Gombár, is a white tatami rectangle (a so called mattress, from which many bamboo sticks come out: the actors are standing between them in statue-like silence, in a black uniform, in the middle there is Kornél Mogyoró with his percussion instruments. But before they “can” move, Zoltán Balázs grabs the word and makes the situation clear. The performance consists of twenty-five scenes, which (for a while) the troupe has learnt in four different versions: with four types of dictions, with four types of music and movement, and above all with four possible Leonces, Lenas and their companions. Nobody knows in advance that which chain of scenes will take place on the tatami each evening. Nobody, as during the performance sometimes the director indicates that what and who has to play; sometimes the actors can choose; and sometimes the viewers can do it. But it is not the end. Balázs encourage the audience: would they watch a scene again, but with different Lena and Leonce, with different tone, or even in different language. So that way the whole picture of the performance that evening depends on the viewers’ enthusiasm, openness and mood, and the time of ending depends on it too.

Maladype leaves the everyday linearity from every point of view, and puts theatre into more dimensions than usual both literally and metaphorically – Zoltán Balázs uses very well, mixes, widens and forms his earlier well-known masters’ catches into his own images. However, the scenes – supported the story for sure in a sort way, by the guiding director’s verbal crutch – follow each other logically in time and the short intervals between them (a momentary silence, while the troupe gets ready again). Because of the accidental repetition and the always-changing performing style, we cannot see it a unity, which is chained onto one line. Anyway, there is not any structure of “actor comes from the left – dialogue – the actor leaves on the right”: exactly the actors, who play the main roles – and their helpers, who are managing the bamboo sticks – always perform a scene, which was made with a unique, perfectly valid ideas on their own, by a given (mostly built on intensive moving theatre) ideas by the director. The moving is emphatically spatial: sometimes the actors’ exercise are wantonly acrobatic: in one of the possible ending scenes, titled The Giant, for example the four female actors are standing on the male actors’ shoulders, but anyway, it is rare when all the performers’ feet are on the ground at the same time.

These scenes are very colourful: we can feel exponentially the experience of the once in a lifetime, of the unrepeatability – it can be counted, that how many evenings can be born if we chain one after another from the hundred ones, in random number and form. This is the paradox of apparently improvisation, which is put between the strictest borders: its special nature is given, the negatively accepted eventuality of improvisation is excluded, as all segments are worked out up until the last parts of them. Eventuality is there only in case of the random order of the scenes: the performance on 21st May started seemingly in an unlucky way, because the second scene was still un-understandably surprising with its unusual form, with seemingly weird silly pop songs (Ákos Orosz performed them); then after it came a dialogue in partly German language, in that way the whole impression has not been improved. It is true that it was suddenly followed, according to the director’s order, by its Hungarian pair – here we can fell the existing order of this. It must have been luckier, it the German scene had come later, that way we could appreciate well the wonderful pictures: Éva Bakos gets dressed Leone (Zoltán Papp), who is crawling on the ground, while she is repeating with calming voice her calming words.

Meanwhile the performance becomes extremely good not because of the words, in contrast with it: Maladype is talking mainly not with words now. With body and bodies; with the help of the stresses, faces, shouts and questions hidden in the permanent moving: Éva Bakos’ monologue, told in sign language or Hermina Fátyol’s, who tells it in Arabic language are characteristic with their despair, they can express. These “flowing” cannot stop at the edge of the stage: especially the great monologue which is told and performed by all the eight actors at the same time, cannot remain on the tatami – the tension fires up, its effect is greater than of a real explosion. More than the greatest amount of those plays that were put on stage last year.

We can list the excellently made scenes for long: wonderful for example as Kamilla Fátyol rocks Katalin Simkó, who is about to be forced to get married, red because of the heat and shaking because of her inner coldness in the cradle made of her own body. The meeting of the Fátyol sisters – as missing nymphs – with Ádám Tompa and Zsolt Páll’s Leonce and Valerio, who are travelling by a boat is similarly beautiful.

I do not know when I saw such a directly, strongly effective performance last time. I do know whether I have seen any time.

Bálint Kovács, Magyar Narancs, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

It can happen anyway, but Leonce and Lena by the Maladype Theatre may be the first national performance – that comes from prose theatre - , which makes its basic tone that thing, which will be defined as physical theatre.

I have thought that we can start with that Zoltán Balázs in the Studio of the Bárka Theatre started with the phrase: „I have thought...”. So let’s talk a little bit what we mean by physical theatre... Meanwhile the term would appear commonly from now on. Then I would write about the unity, mosaic-like nature of the performance, and about the actors’ performances, finally – as a final joke – how I got into it in the final scene as Leonce. Well... I suggest that start it!

1. Prologue: Physical theatre (concept analysis – outline)

To make clear a concept is important to be able to talk about it: it does not mean certainly exact definition, just the practical evidence of something, that we mean by the same concepts the same meanings mostly. The concept of physical theatre, I think – in our country anyway – has not reached it yet. It is mostly the virtual central point of the theatrical language game (it is in connection with the Wittgenstein-like meaning) from the point of view of the discussion about it. From the point of view of creating, it is an idea, an experiment, it is a mostly different kind of approach to body, to movement, to theatre. From the point of view of its sounding and properties - which is in intensive connection with the body and mostly with the text – physical theatre places itself around the borderline between modern dance and theatrical art. On the other hand, both dancing and theatrical art use body first of all: as the interface (as a sign, medium, form) of the non-body (inside, soul, feelings, ideas and so on), which becomes noticeable, while physical theatre named new kind of point of view. It tries to show this same body in its naked physicality and holistic completeness at the same time, as the real subject of the drama. It makes the body a marker, that way it lets the bodywork, (fall down, get tired, get into physical danger) which is the result of lack of stylization. On the one hand, it is a little bit strange, sometimes it is a relative experience of truth in the viewers, on the other hand, the radical here and now nature of the happenings on stage lose their connection with any kind of meaning beyond the pure actions. From this point of view physical theatre is on the borderline of mostly art (dance- and theatre – art) and non-art and – sometimes it is productive and artistic, sometimes it is done in a dilettante and sensationalist way – it asks the question of: “What does art mean?”

However it is not for sure this year, but next year a course of physical theatre director and choreographer will start on The University of Theatre and Film Art, as a result of it, the concept itself will emerge more marked, but at least from theoretical point of view this language game – started from Lloyd Newson (DV8) and it is not infertile at all - will be well defined. It can happen anyway, but Leonce and Lena by the Maladype Theatre may be the first national performance – that comes from prose theatre - , which makes its basic tone that thing, which will be defined as physical theatre. Which from the point of view of the performance is not a compliment just a fact.

2. The play and / or the performance and / or...?

Zoltán Balázs, the director on introductions, leaflets has stated that his idea was to make his actors apply for the roles, which can be won mostly according to their physical conditions, at the beginning of each performance in front of the viewers. As the requirement of it everybody knows all roles, and different couples by actors, who are chosen by the director, have to make for each scenes whole and ready plans, that way they have got only two instructions: the bamboo sticks as properties and physicality as the basic tone. As the result of it there are four versions of each scenes, and a possibility, that anybody can fight for the role of Leonce and Lena. However, it did not happen neither on 21st May - nor any other time before it. We have to accept another kind of game for a while: Zoltán Balázs chose or left out some scenes there reacted to the momentary atmosphere of the auditorium and performers’ mood, besides it, the viewers have the possibility to choose and watch some scenes with different cast with different creative ideas. As the scenes, according to their formation, works more properly – from parodic loudness until the shocking dramatic effect – as atomic scenes, they do not do it by some kind of stricter dramatic arc. They have play hardly the half of Büchner’s scenes (two of them, Leonce’s monologue all of them do – simultaneously), for the first time, we got some kind of workshop than a play... Not even Leonce and Lena by Büchner.

From the other point of view this kind of divergent theatrical formula can be the counterpoint of a strict and pure clean unity: in the intersection area of the auditorium, which is placed on the two sides, the white tatami is similar to the unity of the stage with bamboo sticks placed onto the two ends of it; as well as the unity of the buggy buttoned black cotton dresses, which can be pulled up into the whole body; the unity of bamboo sticks with different length as the only permitted properties; the unity of musical instruments on the stage without any metal and plastic; and above all the unity of special attitude towards human bodies and objects. As the human body sometimes appears as a barrier, then sometimes as an object in danger, sometimes as a challenge, but always as a real human body too (a concrete person’s concrete body). From the strictest point of view, we have seen a play despite the fact that from a strict point of view we have not.

Büchner’s drama is organised repeatedly (not less ironically) by the philosophical and kitchen-like philosophical question: “Who am I?”, at the peak point of the play – at the arrival of Leonce, Lena and their servants to Popo – the problem of indefinability pf identities culminate in an absurd language game. Zoltán Balázs, the director’s basic idea – with the simultaneous cast, with the applying form performance to performance, next to the mechanical structure of the beginning singing-moving scene, with its meaningful moving picture and with its intransparent mixture and finally two viewers moving onto to the stage in the final scene as Leonce and Lena – puts into the centre the question of theatre existence, next to the meta-theatrical reference to the important things of it, as well as the question of self-identity of identity, its changeability, its confusability. From this point of view even if we cannot see the whole text, we can see the most adequate way Leonce and Lena by Büchner.

3. The actors’ performance

The ideas, which the actors have brought up “in connection with bamboos and Büchner”, make differences according to the creative diversity of the basic mood of each scenes and the quality of speech too. Put apart some less lucky way illustrative, some pathetic parts, we can usually see creative, exciting – from the experience of surprise until emotive catharsis – solutions. In one scene Kamilla Fátyol, as Rosetta is in her weird cage of chaotic mixed bamboos, other time she is raised up as Lena with a cross stick, hold under her neck – both scenes refer to the icon of crucifixion. The first is a descriptive and inspired scene, the other one is a little bit pathetically obvious. Sometimes the excitement of the game with the borders of physical and conditional possibilities is weaken by the overplay for it and by the obvious falseness (Maybe the most characteristically during Leonce’s monologues by Ádám Tompa, where the actor with over drown face-game tries to emphasise the overload of his stomach muscle).

For the eyes and ears that get socialized to physical theatre by dance-art performance, the actors’ performance, the complete presence on the stage with it verbality, and its obvious safety offers that kind of calmness, which they can get more often from the modern dance, which tries to “perform” – mostly because of less authentic artistic presence and fake intonation – but with less possibility. The actors of Maladype – Theatre of Encounter do not dare to go farther than it is let by their possibilities, their movements are neither dance nor motion art: these are signs, gestures, drawings, they properly know the borders of the pureness of their civil body, conditional readiness, sporty prosaic nature. Their Leonca and Lena as physical theatre can be perfect and not a complete one. (The lack of training of motion art can be seen in the fact as they articulate as a temptation of the borders of physical capacity sometimes much more often and sematic way.)

There is something undefined shocking in the way as they are standing at the edge of the stage and waiting for calling, more tiredly, even looking at their partner, or backwards to them, but always with motionless faces. And when Zoltán Balázs or the viewers decide that way, they walk onto the stage... They give themselves, they play, and then with the same look they stand back. Like some kind of melancholic gymnastics, sad clowns. However, they are obviously neither these nor those... Maybe they are not sad anyway.

4. Epilogue

Physical theatre is both body and meaning according to the most concrete meaning.

In the ending scene of the performance on 21th May, because of unpredictability and/or by chance they invite onto the stage a theatrical production manager professional writer and a critic: Mari Szilágyi and me. The constellation was perfect because of our shape, criteria of physical-quality nature, and it is not without any meaning that during a theatrical performance with very nice empathy and the kindest, hardly sensible signs they instruct two totally helpless in the situation and shy professionals, who are close to theatre to get married by saying that men are wonderful automats.

The world has turned around with them, they have woken up sweaty from nightmares for days, then one of them starts writing that “I have thought...”...

Ákos Török, Színház, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

We can sit on the two sides of the elevated, rectangular stage in the black studio-box of the Bárka Theatre. From north and south, the viewers are opposite to one another, from west and east the rare set- and properties-like forest of bamboo sticks border the place, which are fixed into the edges of the stage. Obviously it can happen easily that we are sitting on the east side and the bamboos arch on the north – normal compasses do not work inside the theatre, the place of the place is an organic one, which is in motion, which can be perfectly seen from both sides. East and west do not mean points of reference, however it is true that both the bamboos and the uniformed beautiful black dresses, which can be anything (Judit Gombár’s works) referring to the eastern culture with their mood, but they do not have much meaning from the point of view of the playing method or story. They are only beautiful frames and it is not a problem at all. Anyway, if something can be really interesting and exciting in the Maladype Theatre - like theatrical world, these are not the sets or costumes, but what do the play and presence mean for them and us, how can we use the power of „here and there”, it is a kind of dramaturgy of freedom and concentration formed by unpredictability from the side of the viewers and the performers.

The importance of the (board)game of Leonce and Lena is the exciting probe of the eight actors’ readiness and the tension of the variability of the scenes – as Zoltán Balázs, the leader and director of the troupe, similarly to a master of ceremonies and host tells to the viewers at the beginning of the performance, he does it always a little bit differently (it is the factor of unpredictability anyway). The story by Büchner is given with its humour, irony, the tale-like plot is compulsory, but with its re-drawn components; with the prince, who is getting bored spectacularly, enjoyably, in a selfish way, with the escaping princess, and with the ending, which has fake-philosophical lesson. The five main characters of the play are given and many side characters and the exact number of scenes are given. And of course eight excellent actors are given too (Éva Bakos, Kamilla Fátyol, Katalin Simkó, Ákos Orosz, Zoltán Papp, Ádám Tompa, Hermina Fátyol, Zsolt Páll) and a very stick workshop-like working process, which on the one hand has not finished yet, it will not in an ideal situation, on the other hand their results can be seen. The group of Maladype Theatre has done at least four – in some cases eight – different versions to each scenes during the rehearsal period. It can happen with other troupes of course. But in this case, Zoltán Balázs keeps all useable variations and formed (made) them perfect. It means that there are almost one hundred scenes, which are all there equally, with the same possibility in the “pocket of the evening”, one by one. There four different opening scenes on standby, then another four of the second scene, then four of the third dialogue, and they are waiting for the decision of which one of them will be played that evening. This performance is similar to an “onion: there are only layers and layers”! In every scenes – above-under, during, next to, around – there are three another possible versions. The characters are also layered like onions, as in every momentary Lena there are the other Lenas with different characters, ages, bodies, moods, four variations of the nanny, some Rosettas and of course, many Pipi and Popo followers and citizens. With one actor, more different kinds of Leonce-versions are standing on the stage. There is a line of Lenas. Uncountable (so many) possibilities of Leonces and Lenas. And of course many Lenas and Leonces too.

The story of Leonce and Lena is performed every night with the help of some kind of puzzle-like dramaturgy, from fragments of situations, consistently. The order of the scenes is obviously fixed, but there is not one main character, one – used during all scenes – method of play or mood. One scene can be played even four times, with four different versions. The idea is extraordinary good and exciting, the solution of it is not easy of course. According to the original idea, Balázs would “make each scenes applied” by his actors from scenes to scenes for each roles, with a special play of concentration – this system of appliance would create the arc of the performance, the dynamic of the choice of the scenes. But later he uses the experiences of the dress rehearsal and premiere and leaves this game behind for a while, and uses the viewers’ activity for it instead. The viewers can ask for scenes, they can sign if they want to see a situation again, the different version of it, if there are not any wishes, the director orders the happenings and chooses the characters of the next dialogue. Of course, it brings the risk of the shift of stresses in itself: if the audience is passive viewer only, the director’s aim can work all along. From scenes to scenes. It makes the performance closed and the spontaneity and social experience of it get weakened. If it works, and the interested viewers’ point of view construct the arc of the play, set the rhythm of it, an endlessly free stage is formed, where the acceptors can (also) lead, where the childish interest sets the rules and the experience of “what can be” and “it can be somehow different too” (?) remain there. “In everyday life it is fiction, in theatre it is an experiment...” The Maladype Theatre accepts all risks of this incredibly inspiring experimentation with surprising bravery.

The risk can be for example, that the invention, the idea – the base structure itself – ruins, breaks the game, the arc of the stage itself. It is not the arc of the story, but of the presence. The “changing” between the scenes – the dislocating act of the changing of scenes, the applause that follows the well-made situations – anyway divides necessarily the performance into fragments of situations, scenes long parts. A deep breath, game, play, applause, deep breath, game, play, applause. These are countable but in time uncountable flows and drifts in the story – but is there any kind of unity? There is and its alchemy on stage can be interesting. According to their atmosphere and set of properties, the scenes can be different in many ways: they are different too. But with the changing of slight differences and strong contrasts the performance can create its own clear form language, and the game with the sounds is an elemental part of it, as well as the simple usage of the body shapes, the structures of movements. The base experience is the natural minimalism of properties: there is not anything else “by hand”, just the numerous bamboo sticks with different length and the magical possibility of “changing into anything” in them. The bamboo can be an element of the formation of the area: a plank over the water, a roof, a raising structure and throne. And anything else too: horse, a blade of grass, sword, penis, microphone, binocular...The raising, and the choreography, which needs great physical work, sometimes acrobatic exercises and the balancing games improves into language of movement, they do not illustrate but follow (strengthen, emphasize, interpret, over tone) the situations. The musicality is also a defining dimension: Kornél Mogyoró’s presence on the stage, the live following by rhythm, these can be the harmonic result of the experiments with acoustic solutions (cries and whispers, games of articulations, singing parts, making of sounds and noises, special recitatives) can create a strong and unified atmosphere, which is strong even in voice. These basics of the form give the frame, which is filled with individual content and characteristics by the performers’ personalities of the actually Leonces and then Lenas: with a dialect, Hebrew words, melody, erotic or other kinds of jokes of the under part – means by word – of humans from the Popo world, with fine shades and vibration, sarcastic humour or even with silent tragedy.

My strong belief that the is not the best Leonce or the perfect Lena – anyway, there is not any time and possibility to identify with one figure character, so something extraordinary happens: we identify with as many people are many there are in the troupe. In this case it is very important, as in this performance a partly renewed, synchronized troupe can be examined well, who take attention to one another with fine sensors. A Maladype, which has been changed partly but it has remained self-identical and promising. This kind of viewpoint is exciting not only for the troupe but for the performance too, anyway instead of Lena’s figure, the act of becoming Lena – or even the movement from one scene to another, the changing from Leonce to Valerio, the formation from one characterised Lena to the other one - holds our attention first of all, the properties of metamorphosis, its forms, dangers, methods. It is important, that these figures are ready, independent by scenes. They have been worked out and thought over, they are nuanced. In case of the different versions of scenes the mood of the picture puzzle, which was reborn from mosaics in the evenings, is important, and there is no place for improvisation that can mix up everything. It slightly makes me remember the inspiring and trying atmosphere for both the viewers and the actors, of the Hamlet by Tim Caroll in Bárka Theatre – the comparison is obvious. In connection with the experience of “here and now”, as well as the ending scene that involves viewers too, where from the innocent viewers the actors lead a man and woman bare-feet onto the stage. Occasional Leonce and Lena can be anybody. With their bare-feet stage fright, exclusive embarrassment of the evening, in a confusion, which cannot be repeated. In case of the performances of Hamlet these kind of calm atrocities on stage happened sometimes. But in case of Caroll’s direction the improvised tightrope act had a very different kind of risk. The actors, who direct themselves and those great amounts of different things, resulted in uncontrolled hairpin bends on stage. That was dangerous and exciting. Leonce and Lena is more stylized, clearer, more manageable: it is ready polished, wonderfully working or even less punctual, but anyway well-choreographed, ordered scenes follow one another. It is a theatrical chain made of pearls of scenes with interesting shapes. The pearls of scenes are the same evening by evening, but the result – re-laced again and again – lights always a little bit differently. In case of the shown version the repeatable unrepeatability of the actual combination is interesting, and the really special, but very theatrical attention in the auditorium.

“Well, can you see Lena, our pockets are full, there are full of with puppets and any kind of toys? What shall we do with them? (...) Shall we build theatre?” We could not hear this sentence by Leonce finally, we dissolve in the public ending scene, however the neither-Leonces nor-Lenas in the auditorium have said yes for it all along the performance, the question is not a question any more. The pockets of Leonces and Lenas of the Maladype Theatre are full of with toys: with talent, ideas and drive, and they use them for very good things. They build theatre. A theatre. A real one. An always-changing one. An honest one. An experimental one. A brilliant one.

Dóra Juhász, Criticai Lapok, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

It is a creative, witty, artistic summery, which widen all kind of theatrical borders, about the way, how we can reform a dead writer’s play, which is written with one simple story. Thanks for Zoltán Balázs’ unique interpretation it is a real delicacy for theatre lovers: it is the importance of Leonce and Lena, which gets alive in the performances of Maladype Theatre in the evenings, always in a new form.

At the beginning of the performance Zoltán Balázs, director tells the viewers obviously (it is a full house, I am sitting on an extra chair), that what is going to happen that evening, and the eight actors with expressionless faces, in black dresses, standing between the bamboo sticks are waiting silently for performing real theatre in front of us. Georg Büchner classical play is about a prince (he is Leonce), who does not want to get married, against his father greatest wish; Lena is a bored princess, who lives her everyday life in the shadow of her nanny, and how surprising, she does not want to get married too. The story is about the meeting of these two people, who hardly refuse love, and how can they fight with their own inner demons.

This is the main story, Büchner’s world ends here anyway, and another dimension appears, which is full of ideas, humour, scenes that are being thought over repeatedly and many bamboo sticks. To make it clear, I try to sum up the young director’s conception. Zoltán Balázs “has made” the twenty-five scenes of the play in different variations (from each scene, four versions have been made), partly he let the actors do it, and let them build bravely in the dialogues their own ideas too. Altogether, one hundred scenes are ready, of course, they do not play all of them, to quote the director’s words: “we would sit here for three days”. The played versions change every evening, so there cannot be the same performance, the mood and the viewers can always form the content and the length of the play.

It is genius, surreal, grotesque, absurd and the most important one, thanks for the actors there are not any confusing interpretations on the “stage”. It is true, that we have to change a little bit, not to get embarrassed and desperate, when the actors are singing pop songs of the 90s between the dialogues, and to push the wider borders of the performance, the Hungarian version of Britney Spears’ song means eroticism.

The audience is laughing and get shocked by the fact how differently can each scenes be interpreted. Zoltán Balázs offers us the alternatives, and we are marvelling and staring, if the actors evoke the same scene in more versions. We can feel ourselves a little bit, as we are looking behind the sets to see how the director create the dramaturgical vision, how he can see differently the personalities and situations from his other colleagues.

The story does not get lost in the performance, the director takes care of it too, he always informs the audience, that where we are and who can be seen in the next scene. So we cannot lose the ground under our feet, and do not get into the trap, that is nowadays lurking for us, if we see those kind of classics on the stage, which is modern, and hardly drowns into the free interpretation, and we think about adjectives like indifferent and outrageously bad after the falling of the curtain. There is nothing like this here. It is a game, which can be taken dead serious, like art, and we can flirt with it similarly to nuances hidden in art.

The actors of Maladype Theatre do exactly the same: they draw nuances around us, and with their performance the content becomes a whole, even if, sometimes they get far away from the reality, which is thought to be touchable.

After we have seen and heard the eight actors in the performance we can say that Zoltán Balázs has not only reinterpreted the play perfectly, but he chose the actors well too. Which is the most important one that the four men and four women’s characters are changing from scene to scene, so it can happen that an actress plays Lena once then in the other version performs the role of the nanny. The four ladies are: Éva Bakos, Kamilla Fátyol, Katalin Simkó and Hermina Fátyol, their creative solutions of characters are in perfect harmony with the four actors, Ákos Orosz, Zoltán Papp, Ádám Tompa and Zsolt Páll’s male roles. The eight of them with the always-changing cast can make the performance even more colourful and more meaningful.

It is interesting that the director has made all the eight actors learn Leonce’s monologue, and that evening, when I have the possibility to watch the performance, he came up with that idea: all the actors, at the same time tell the monologue according to their own interpretation. The actors do not know about it but they solve it perfectly.

I have to mention some other interesting properties, which are bamboo sticks with different length, they have different function in each scenes. Once they are ships, then they form a Jacuzzi, they can symbolize a forest, but it can happen that they have to materialize some kinds of inner feelings.

Who would like to play a little bit with art, as a concept, I offer them to watch anyway, the performance of Leonce and Lena as Zoltán Balázs has put it on stage.

Zoltán Kristóf, Napvilág.net, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Zoltán Balázs does not choose for the last time a performance with normal length, from night to night the situation will decide what we can see. It can frustrate the viewers that they would miss something anyway. It is an accepted fragment, let’s see it more, this is the solution.

In case of Acropolis, it did not still work, but the way of thinking could be seen there too, which could have become a symbol in this performance, which is limitless, transformable and able to point beyond itself. There they laid down, rolled up carpets, and seemingly, they showed the deeper and deeper meanings, but it could not tell anything in the performance. Mostly it was covered by colourful clothes but seemingly worked well thanked for the well-calculated choreography: it could cover the lack in the content. In case of Leonce and Lena Zoltán Balázs chose eight strong bamboo sticks as properties that can give the inexhaustible set of transformation. The sticks are good to make narrow and vulnerable the place, as well as it is in case of Leonce and Lena’s travelling, and they are good to hit something.

This is eight cavemen’s dance of fertility with sticks. We can walk back to the origin of theatre, to the ancient past with the help of these bamboo sticks. The bamboo can be pencil, binocular, musical instrument, a blade of grass, house or penis. From the eight sticks, we can build. Every scene is a movement etude, which uses sticks as properties. They climb on them, hold them, hit them, see things in it. As the roles can always belong to somebody else, and the actors get always different roles, there is not a permanent cast.

Judit Gombár’s sets are always able to transform, so far it was not without any aim. Now it has its own function: the clothes can be used as tools later. First eight actors are standing in black dresses that cover their arms too, they are similar to eight black puppets, they are singing a song, and then they climb from it. But the puppet-like role remains: eight sticks and eight stick-like people.

We can see a circus on the white cultic stage on which can be stepped only bare feet, we can sit on two sides of it. More and more virtuoso artistic scenes come one after another, there is joy on the stage, as the actors are singing. The scenes are demanding physically too, we admire what they can do. But now the rite does not finish with it, something starts running, which has not done it so far.

I watched the performance on 9th May, which is important, as I could see something totally different from those who watch it other time. Leonce and Lena is a boy and a girl’s story. If in a troupe, there are four male and four female actors why cannot they all get the chance to play the mail role? The troupe of Maladype Theatre has made improvisations to the chosen texts, in smaller groups, so that way more valuable variations were able to be born for a part. From these Zoltán Balázs does not choose some to form one normal length performance forever, but according to the situation some of them are presented to strengthen the one-time nature of the performance.

I am frustrated all along because I would miss something. That is one reason why the viewers are working in dark when they try to control what to see. Therefore, the problem is not that they cannon choose a scene, but we do not know which couples’ versions are better or not, from which worth asking for more. The audience is not uniform too. I do not dare to speak, as they gurgle many times in the background, as they do not want to listen to this monologue once more, and of course, here is the behaviour, which is common in Hungary: let me not tell anything on my place. The law of energy saving is prevailed. It is good that somebody tries to do something against it and some good intentions make is clear that this night cannot offer the whole. There is much more work behind it, than a traditional theatrical night can offer. It is an accepted fragment, the solution is to watch it more.

Leonce and Lena’s story is summed up for us in the programme, in some lines, but even the text does not get the same important role in the etudes. In some of them we can recognise a well-known motive, a knot on the tissue, according to the original re-composition it helps to introduce the form of the infantile King Peter as a knot on a nappy. Sometimes happens that the text in the new context works in a funny and surprising way, anyway mostly we forget about it. The texts were useful as starting points.

The performance shows us wilder pictures than Leonce’s scatter-brained world. We can understand it that Balázs digs under this surface, to show us the working powers deep under the play without the glaze of kindness. But not without humour. Anyway, the basic story does not play a central role, neither do the main characters.

What we see can work because there is a genuine relationship between people. Sometimes a simple dialogue – like the Swedish Ákos Orosz and Katalin Simkó’s meeting – is stronger than impressively acrobatic elements. Anyway, their relationship can be very different too from in the original story. When we can see scenes in Swedish or without any text (Éva Bakos’ monologue is performed by sign language), they can be truer, as they have hardly any connection with Leonce and Lena. It is a much darker world with greater passions.

“As I was hit on my spine with a stick” – we can hear it in Leonce’s monologue, the other time we can hear it: “I do not dare to stretch my arm, I am afraid of bumping into something everywhere.”

It was unsuccessful in the Rite of the Radnóti Theatre, as a civil theatre was not enough to show the elemental power of a rite, I can see it happening there successfully during the best etudes. The actors load themselves until the final point. Ádám Tompa has to hold on himself eight sticks, but it is hard not only physically.

The strength of the performance is the amount of power and attention the performers put in each etudes, in it their virtuosity can help but cannot stand in for it. Zsolt Páll and Ákos Orosz’s sweat is dripping. Kamilla Fátyol’s Rosetta is crying. We can see real feelings, borderline situations emotionally and physically too. They strain themselves to the end and it raise physical experience in us too. When we can see them in danger because they hit their heads into the sticks, like in a circus, we do not even dare to give a sound. It is bad, almost painful to me too, as Katalin Simkó’s head is getting purple, but it is, which can create the truth of scenes. When they are wobbling with the sticks, they almost reach the line of the viewers but we manage to escape. The experience can catch up with us. As everything really happens with the actors and they do not just imitate it, they do not create an illusion, it becomes strong, which is happening between two people.

But it is not any kind of ceremony: it is a rite of initiation. Of theatre, life, overcoming of ourselves. Most of the scenes are long and they subject the actors to cruel trials, which they bear without any words and fulfil. Katalin Simkó hits her head to be purple and Kamilla Fátyol floats on a single hair (stick) between the sky and the ground. The troupe holds together. They hold safely each other not to fall down. Katalin Simkó visit to King Peter has very different associations than Leonce and Lena’s story. I can see Uma Thurmant with master Hattori Hanzo. I can see a cruel introduction, an exaggeration, which is increased until parody, and then finally the girl realizes that she should not grovel but shout. She should treat herself as an equal opponent. This introduction can be found in each scene. As Romeo forgets his first love, Rosa, Ádám Tompa’s Leonce also lets down Kamilla Fátyol’s Rosetta, he buries his lover like a human sacrifice. He humiliates her on every possible ways, she is stretched into sticks, she just bears it, but finally shouts and finds herself again. We can see Katalin Simkó’s Rosetta too, she spit back after she has been impaled, speared with a stick.

There is a battle of power relations on the stage, it is an elemental theatrical question. Their appearance, their ascetic worked-out bodies, the braided hair of the girls and Zsolt Páll’s baldhead can reflect their restrained energy too. Then they let this energy out. Sometimes it is a little bit exaggerated, it is made in a sensationalist way, but I have to admit that it has effects on me.

We are witnesses of a ritual game. The tempo can be beaten by the sticks, the songs create monotonous rhythm too, it is not without any humour. We do not miss Rabelais and Büchner’s humour, the world that is upside down, there is not any story or hierarchical structure, individual scenes come one by one. But there is urine and faeces. From this later one comes a rhythmical song by Katalin Simkó in the scene of nappy, when she changes kindly and humorously nappy on the shy King Peter, performed by Ákos Orosz. The rhythmical movements, the prayer wheel-like circling around a stick, all these can create a musical base-rhythm. Katalin Simkó also tells Leonce’s monologue, with her beautiful a serious voice, as we cannot see the play there for a while, the life-situation is a usual one, it cannot be connected just to men.

The stick can show us different aspects of female roles: it can be a tool of sexuality, or a baking board between two sticks, which were rubbing into each other more and more monotonously and intensively. Katalin Simkó’s love scene make us remember an old children play: “the lamb is out the wolf is inside”. They chase each other similarly during the love-scene of hawks, until the existing lamb becomes less interesting. The repressed and effusive energy is the main character of the play.

Meanwhile those, who are not performing are sitting around, they take part in the performance with their attention and help, they work as a troupe, they are similar to eight constructive elements similarly to the bamboo sticks. During the post-show discussion after the Seagull by Krétakör, somebody asked László Katona, that did he smile as Medvegyenko or as Láazló Katona in one scene, while he is sitting outside, as those who are not performing are sitting here too. He said that there is not difference. However, the base of the Seagull was the text by Chekov, the two performing style is the same. It is not a fall out from their role in neither of the performances.

We cannot see here neither Leonces nor Lenas, just virtuoso marionettes, who has become actors by concentration as they are performing on behalf of themselves. They have been made to the characters of a rite by playing maximal attention to one another. With the power of their gaze they can hypnotise the scenes, to create the necessary, magical atmosphere. Kornél Mogyoró, who orders the play with percussion instruments, as an outsider with his concentrated help can become an integral part of the performance (with Lehmann’s words), of this profane rite.

There are spectacular but self-serving elements in the performance too. Sometimes the language, which they have formed, goes on just technically and becomes empty. We can realise these things in case of Zoltán Papp’s monologue or Ádám Tompa and Zsolt Páll’s scene, titled Phobia. Altogether, it is a mostly high qualitied experiment, they draw with the sticks flexibly, as Zoltán Papp does it in his already mentioned monologue. The sticks have two ends, they can hold them upside down, with a farce-like humour, when the sticks become penises, and the girls (Hermina Fátyol and Éva Bakos) walk up on them. Some situations are tensed to the extreme, the sticks are hardly long enough, not to collided with the viewers, but when they say: “like I have been hit on my spine by a stick”, and I can see an artistic trick from a circus, my spine gets hurt too.

In the end, the actors become giants, as sitting on each other’s necks. Eight Lena, lady and Rosetta are sitting on eight Peter, Leonce and Valerio’s necks. Finally, everybody can show themselves here. The result of the night is not an equal victory for all of them, from the girls, Katalin Simkó can show herself the most, today she has become Zoltán Balázs’ favourite. But Éva Bakos was asked too, whose wide smile is an important moment of the night. From the men Zsolt Páll and Ádám Tompa get the main roles this night. They are those, and Kamilla Fátyol and Ákos Orosz, whose identity can be seen behind their virtuosity. Ákos Orosz especially as Valerio gives memorable moments to us in the scene of urine. It let us see, that the troupe is almost equal.

Is it an advantage to base on the eventuality, which scenes would be presented from the hundred? Or is it better is Zoltán Balázs chooses, in whom the intention to perform does not work the best way, does he only show those scenes, which are valid for that night? Everybody should decide it alone.

The giants, as an ending scene is a perfect choice: Hermina Fátyol chooses randomly a man and a woman from the auditorium, with closed eyes, they become the main characters of the wild finale. The performers resign democratically from their emphasized roles. This night the two viewers could even improvise in the middle of the circle: they start dancing. The performance can teach this kind of activity at least to two people.

Zoltán Papp is going around his stick while he is telling Leonce’s monologue. This motive points above itself, it highlights the structure of the performance. They do not want to get anywhere, the compact, whole performance is not the aim. If they have enough air, the audience could go on watching the “missing scenes”. I cannot see everything and I do not get a new Leonce and Lena, just an exciting performance, which can rephrase it. But what exactly? Neither Leonces nor Lenas. It is a shame that Zoltán Balázs tells us where we are in the story, however he does it, because a viewer asks for it. These scenes have already got far away from the text for a while, we can see the actors’ own stories, who are artist with stilts, who are professional performers. They get great applause. The hit of the stick on the spine has physical effect.

Noémi Herczog, prae.hu, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The viewers can decide what they would play.

Everything, which cannon happen during the new performance of Maladype troupe in the Bárka Theatre, can be as important as or even more important than that has happened. Let’s begin with the fact, that during a night we can see almost four or three part of that, which the performers have made in connection with the parodist-like grimace of Leonce and Lena by Büchner. The four male actors have prepared for all the male roles, the four women for the female characters, more exactly they have made variations for all the scenes of play in all the casts, which have been formed that way. According to the original idea some kind of race would decide who, when and what will play. Maybe it would be a little bit similar to that process as some years ago Tim Caroll directed Hamlet in the same building, with Zoltán Balázs as the main character, who then organised too the performance from night to night mostly based on improvisation. Now he orders the happenings as a director and he has a role similar to a presenter.

The idea has changed by the time of the premiere. There is not any race, the actors cannot decide what to play, but the viewers can, but they are ordered effectively by the director-presenter. The choice is a pig in a poke of course. The viewers can be interested in any different version of the scenes if they on the one hand they would know the play well, on the other hand they would know many things about the performers. It is hardly expectable from the public. The attraction of unknown can make the well-prepared machine work soon. The process is absurd but to question it, that is absurd too. It is a pig in a poke that it is all. We choose the poke that way we cannot know whether an angry, wild and black animal or a calmly, nice and white one comes out of it.

And above all, we cannot know what remains in the unopened pokes. At least we can imagine it. The scene variations, we have seen, indicate strong, uniform taste. On a light coloured podium, the performers are standing in lines on the two sides, wearing black tops and trousers, which can be pulled up until their neck, behind them in two lines there are wonderful bamboo sticks, and there is Kornél Mogyoró with drums, stroh violin and other tools to make noise. They sometimes connect or even replace the exciting text with passionate or acrobatic gymnastic feats. The tension can be raised from time to time by balancing difficulties. The bamboo sticks want their roles too. Anyway, besides the hard work and strong concentration the aesthetic performance, which cannot be questioned, can impress the viewers sooner or later. Then we have not mentioned yet those moments, when traditional performance of actors, humour flash through the unique set of signs. On the premiere, between the numerous hard working parts, Éva Bakos’ silent monologue and her smile that sneering the lady’s desire for love, and Katalin Simkó devoting self-torture stand out.

The real lack are not those numerous variations, which cannot be performed during a night. But what Zoltán Balázs stated too on the premiere: he though it unnecessary to put one another interpretation to the numerous ones of the play. So instead of performing the play, the are playing with it. They did not care about the different, possible solutions of the simple story, about its imaginable contents, above all, they did not want to put into a united order, the small secrets of the text. They were just looking for the possibilities of playing in it – so it is not so important, who, when and how many can see from it.

We can say that this playfulness is pointless, and that here is the end of theatre. But even that here is its beginning.

László Zappe, Népszabadság, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Life is a fight. The stage is a giant, rectangular, light, tatami-like wrestling mat. On the two shorter sides of it, there are pitted sticks, like bamboos, in two different sizes, standing in the circled holes. The performers (women and men) are wearing the same kind of black dresses, which are made of light material, they are loose, so they make possible the future (many) movements, acrobatic exercises, the fight that is similar to judo sometimes, and should be placed on a tatami. (The set and costumes are Judit Gombár’s works; they are obviously functional and aesthetic in their minimalism.)

With the title, I had to indicate that it has not been only about Georg Büchner’s philosophical comedy, which was written in 1836, but a special variation of it. First, I thought about the title: Leonce and Lena by Zoltán Balázs. But it would not be accurate. The leader of Maladype – Encounters’ Theatre entrusts more radically than before, the fate of the performance to the creative abilities and fantasy of the troupe during the rehearsals, that is why Leonce and Lena, which we can see in Bárka Theatre really belongs to the Maladype.

The actors have created four versions from twenty-five scenes of the play, so altogether they have made a hundred variations (the roles are changing too during each variation), from them we could see more than thirty during the premiere night. The most accurate title for my report would be: Leonce and Lena by Maladype, as it was performed on the premiere. Zoltán Balázs has invented anyway, how the director can create a different performance every night from the given set. Like a special narrator – I think according to his actual feelings and the formation of the performance on stage – he chooses from the variations, and viewers can ask for another variation too, so we can see some scenes more, in different ways too. (This method had a history. Tim Carroll directed Hamlet in Bárka Theatre in 2005, that they “raffled” every night, which actors would play different roles, and those properties could influence the performance a lot, which were brought by the viewers. Hamlet – the only fixed character – was Zoltán Balázs. In that production, anyway – in contrast with the present Leonce and Lena – there were many improvisations, and the director did not take part in the performance.)

But get back to the carpet, where life is a fight, from where the players’ wild and ordered energy flow towards the audience. On the premiere, maybe the first optional scene had the greatest effect. Maybe because it was the first one: it was unexpected and shocking. We could not understand anything from it by words, as the text is told on Swedish language, but we could feel much more. A strong man teaches, forms a fragile girl for something – with the help of a reed stick. The lessons are: hit the head to the reed, catch the reed from more and more further, cry. Zsolt Páll and Katalin Simkó wonderful intensity could raise the scale of actions into symbolic, beautiful in its frightening nature.

“This moment is the holder of my whole life” – Leonce sparks the importance of the joy of love that way with one of the most beautiful sentences of universal literature. “My God, what I did wrong, that similarly to a school boy, you make me tell the lesson again and again” – he states the boredom of everyday schedule with another most beautiful sentence of universal literature. The thinking person and the artist, who wrote all of it, was twenty-three years old. Some months later, he was dead. This young troupe shows Büchner’s wild and wise youth in an adequate way. The action which was created by Büchner they hardly do, partly the characters and in a really special way: I have to tell it too, if I want to be honest with myself and the performers (it is worth writing only that way).The scenes, which are not on the same level of quality (anyway most of them are good), remain fragments, they do not form an arc, after all the performance does not raise catharsis. Unless the expansion of the actors’ performance, the wonderfully worked-out scenes, the performers’ concentration can do it.

This kind of enormous effort, fight are necessary for the things of life? - people are thinking about it if they see Leonce and Lena. For performing, it is if you are the member of Maladype. Your reward can be the pleasure of the well-made work. It can be seen on the members’ faces while they are experiencing the great success. The already mentioned, wonderful Zsolt Páll and Katalin Simkó would deserve this acceptance, the focused Éva Bakos, who interprets Leonce’s monologue only with sign-language and movements, would do too, as well as Ádám Tompa who walks through and mediates all through the scale from elf-like playfulness until male aggressivity passionately and cleverly and Ákos Orosz, Zoltán Papp, Hermina Fátyol, Kamilla Fátyol who perform not fewer devotion and creativity. (I do not want to leave Kornél Mogyoró out, who as a percussion instrument player is a common and great participant of the performances by Maladype.) From the scale of fights Katalin Simkó’s Leonce-monologue with its obsession while rubbing the reeds to each other, Ádám Tompa works with “guest sentences” (“My baby is a has pasta-like face” – Feró Nagy and the Bikini), he balances more and more reed with his legs, arms, whole body, besides his brilliant Leonce-monologue a meaningful scene, when Zoltán Papp as Leonce can do all of his steps just on the feet, hand and body of his “servant-philosopher”, Valerio (Zsolt Páll).

The Blacks in 2004 and The Tempest from last year (in co-production with the Bárka Theatre) seem to be a more cathartic performance on the way of Maladype, than this premiere is. Meanwhile from the point of view of the construction of the troupe, of the artistic research, Leonce and Lena is an important stage too, which does not leave the viewers without experiences fortunately.

György Harmat, Tiara Magazin, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Zoltán Balázs at the beginning of the performance tells the story of Leonce and Lena. The title characters as unknown people have escaped from the responsibility for each other and the public life, and then later they run into each other’s arm fatedly. Büchner wrote about a two dozen of easy-going scenes, the actors of Maladype have learnt all of them in four different ways, and every evening they play as many of them during the almost three hours long period of them, as the director discusses it with the viewers. It is not a dramatic whole; it is just a mosaic. Ronconi worked out Peer Gynt, Strehler did it with the Faust. Leonce and Lena is a mosaic, expressive play anyway, it is more verbal poetically than full of with actions, and it offers itself for the process.

There are twice four actors in front of each other (between the auditoriums of the viewers), they are lining up well ordered on the flexible carpet, like a stadium, until the director has not called them in for the next action. They use the long bamboo sticks, which are fixed into the two ends of the carpet, as properties, with throwing, closing into cages, with the over fixing of some characters’ arms and legs they make harder the telling of the text for them. Physical theatre requires strong concentration, tempo-rhythm, punctuality and connections with partners. Above all, it requires hard work, leaving the comfortable stereotypes. As the aim is not the imitation of reality, but to create the inner reality under the surface (to make the invisible visible, as Brook said it), the telling of the story is not important (there is not any story), but to show (extend) some parts like an image, which is limited by the actors’ psychophysical abilities. Two of them are getting over a swamp dialogised, while one of them is squirming on the ground, the other one holding the partner and goes around the body many times, without putting a leg on the carpet. If we see two variations of this episode, we can have a tragic and comic version too – it is up to our interpretation. They can humiliate, free up, create a spiritual devotion, build a ship (it can be a mermaid-like symbol of a parody of a cult-film at its bow) with bamboo sticks. They can make fun of mythology of pop-culture (there is a scene entitled Britney, the other one is Mission Impossible), we can feel emotionally verbality (one monologue is on Swedish the other one on Arabic language), we can release rigid self-control with the involvement of viewers (anyone can become Leonce and Lena).

What is this evening in Bárka Theatre about? It cannot be about neither the acrobatic, erotic nor the sport performance; we go to the circus, Moulin Rouge and Sport Arena for them. The content of theatre – the actors’ quality too – can be judged only as the part of the whole performance. The eight of them – Éva Bakos, Hermina Fátyol, Kamilla Fátyol, Katalin Simkó, Ákos Orosz, Zoltán Papp, Zsolt Páll, Ádám Tompa – do not have effect because of their professional performance, not because can “solve” this and that but because of their readiness. They have built worlds from fragments (their own one, and Popo and Pipi’s empire from the empire), which are determined. They themselves are vulnerable – according to the wishes of empire, director and viewers -, and they serve at the same time. They handle it with self-awareness. Impassively. With dignity. They have been soften at the end of the performance. They let two of us from the auditorium to their own empire. They are fragments of the whole too. They are well-prepared too, they must have talked about it with them during the interval. They did not want this meeting too, but it has happened anyway. It is a meeting of loneliness; they do it a little bit hesitantly, embarrassedly, as in case of Büchner. On the other hand, is it only just one more variation? The beauty in it is that it cannot be known.

Tamás Koltai, Élet és Irodalom, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)