What can be the reason, why the Maladype Theatre gets the third part of The Divine Comedy, and puts it on stage. Because of its modern nature? No way, as Dante is conservative catholic, he lines up sins with hard words and scourges them. Yes, but Dante is the most modern person of his time, he is the ancestor of all reporters (© Egon Erwin Kisch), who faces up all terrible views with honest interest, however, he clearly gets the risky conditions: “Who enters here, gives all the hope up!”

And why does he do all these? To be able to get his lover Beatrice to and through the inferno, purgatory towards the stars. Can Dante be dusted? It seems to be yes. But should we do it? Of course, it can benefit from it. Not because of its dusty feelings and ideas, but on contrast to it. But its phrasing really comes from the middle age, its statements are extremely long. But what it writes down and shows us – even raises up – that can be used again and again. For example when morals get worse.

Let’s admit, that morals always gets worse. There has not been any time, which seniors have not complained about the failing of its youngsters. Or it was there in Dante’s era, the political fight, which has been going on for more than a century, between the Guelph (followers of the pope) and the Ghibellines (followers of the emperor), which can effect again in our everyday life too. As anytime can be two political power against each other, when none of them is as clean as the snow. So by rereading, re-watching Dante, we can find ideas, which can be said to our modern time.

So now only the text itself has to be reedited. By the work of Judit Góczán, dramaturg, some parts of the texts by Thomas Mann and Paolo Santarcangeli can get into it, and Ádám Nádasdy’s new translations, which have been made especially for this performance. However a practiced theatre goer might not even recognise it, as even if between the familiar statements by Babits, very modern parts appear too – for example, Beatrice’s long and modern list about the fact why she hates people. And at the end of the list, she tells broken – that that is why she loves people.

The text seems to be almost prose, as Zénó Faragó (Dante) starts telling jerkily the familiar statements, and sitting on a throne, which makes us remember a Robert Vallejo’s graphic or even a try by death-metal bands, he starts his tour in the inferno. Beatrice (Kamilla Fátyol) follows him as an angel, and Ákos Orosz, as a modern Lucifer gives the counterpoint to him.

But let’s the guide, Vergil! Andrea Ladányi is a guidebook with many texts. He is the strict guide for Dante, who is annoyingly curious, who wants to understand himself, meanwhile he understands others’ failures, sins, miseries and shames. Vergil is a cruel master with aesthetic outlook, who is a role model. Ladány appears in short tailed black coat, tight-fitting trousers on the stage, with her flat short hair, she is similar to a German money-aristocrat’s child, who is over bred (with confused gender identity) of the 30s. The late poet descendant cannot expect any forgiveness of sympathy of him.

As we are rushing through the past without Christianity, the accidental shadows, the statists of the performance, get their own roles, the nameless ones, who have very important role – so the damned souls. Their movements (it is the wonderful work by the designer of movements, by András Szőllősi) can make them real bio-set: and this word must be handled from a very positive point of view now. They are the boiling swamp, the wild sea, which surrounds Ulysses, they are the embodied binge around Ciacco, who has fallen into the sin of gluttony. And if we get deeper into the inferno: they are the grove of vivid trees, of the jealous ones.

Then the more horrific ones come circles by circles: the tyrants, killers, robbers, murderers, blasphemous ones, hypocrites, unnatural lechers, usurers – finally the cheaters and traitors. Around all of us, the appearance of the coated-hooded souls, their marching, falling, collapsing can make the place to be the horrible world of the Inferno.

We can hear them differently on the stage, but Babits’ words are the most beautiful ones, which can be told about any soul that gets into the inferno: “all of them has the same sin, the ugly life”. So the Comedy has one scene, the sin of which Dante convicts, but the beauty of it, does not make us remember the Inferno: the story of the dead ones of love. This is Paolo and Francesca’s famous love. The man asks for his (ugly) brother – for political reasons, to get the piece of weapons – the beautiful girl from Rimini, but finally they fall in love with each other, and the idyll is stopped by the sword strike by the brother. The two young ones’ circling and going around, the hanging of their arms to each other, can give wonderful moments to the viewers.

Zénó Faragó’s Dante rarely leaves the mental-cold time machine. He is going around in it, as he is blown by a tornado. He asks tirelessly the newer and newer subjects of his interviews, even if he dies because of them. The punishing dance of the inferno goes on around and in front of him. From the two sides of the throne, which is decorated by skulls, Beatrice and Lucifer do not get very far. They seem to live in a shell, they are separated from the world of shadows by top lights. Dante is only a visitor. Vergil, as some kind of main hunter, he guides and judges, while standing on the top of the back of the throne. Andrea Ladányi’s all tensed standing on one point, even her steel sharp voice too: all these are frozen dance. They are wonderful.

The roles, which are marked by many names, here performed by five actors: Zoltán Lendváczky, Judit Kovács Ligeti, Zsolt Páll, Erika Tankó and Ádám Tompa. They take me with themselves. There are not any fake movements, dissonant voices. By the way: the voice. In spite of its monumental and monotonous nature, the Japanese taiko drums, with their many sounds, and the other percussion instruments are played (stylishly) incredibly well by Ákos Kerényi and Kornél Mogyoró.

Zoltán Balázs treat with definite arms the greatest text of the 14th century – and since than of the world literature. It is not sure, that he does it respectfully, but with powerful conception anyway. The result confirms him: he can make a performance for the modern time. However, it is good if the viewers can prepare before from the original work, as without it, they can just move their heads, while those great amounts of names and references are told. However, it could be similar, in case of Dante’s peers too...

István J. Bedő, olvassbele.hu, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

At the half of human life, a muscular, half-naked rocker leaves for the empire of the other world. He gets as his followers a silver painted seat of a spaceship, a female terminator, a leopard in lace dress and a Lucifer in frilly skirt. Dante’s Inferno starts in the Trafó with a slow swirl.

The troupe of Maladype accepted much more than that can be fulfilled. It is not enough, that by summing up their ten years old existence, they put on stage the least stage like vision of the international literature, but they use a linguistic feat too: they perform at the same time the first part of The Divine Comedy by Babits’ and Ádám Nádasdy’s newly made translation. To the lines by Babits, which sound on archaic language Nádasdy’s texts can give ironic answers, the two types of linguistic interpretation are changed lines by lines and sentence by sentence: sometimes the level of the text itself becomes a drama, as the dialogue is between the world views of the two translations.

This double nature goes on with the mixture of genders. Andrea Ladányi performs Vergil – over her high heeled shoes and tight trousers, she wears a short coat – her rigid face, sculpture-like movements, perfect muscles, can follow the poet on his way as a senseless fulfiller, while Ákos Orosz’s Lucifer is soft, weak, grotesque figure, who shows in lace and frill the inferno-like reflection of the cruel human world. Between the guilty souls, sometimes women, than men perform the mostly male roles, even their movements do not tell anything about their gender, just the text interprets them according to their own places. There are androgynous creatures, victims, who are closed into the prison of their bodies, they are those, who live in the inferno-like, desolate place of the inferno. The new place of this dual nature is opened between the actors and volunteers, who get involved into the performance, who have applied for the appeal of Maladype to form the moving, vivid mass of the “sinful souls”, with excellent choreography. (András Szőllősi, who is the leader of the movements, can rise them to be equal with the other elements of the view on stage.)

Zoltán Balázs’ staging does a lot to make the Inferno a liveable, sensible, familiar place for the contemporary viewers. He involves civilian performers and with their help he can make deeper the concept of suffering. He puts Dante’s way into a minimal set (Péter Polgár’s visual world is sometimes pop-art-like, then works with the fashions of interior design, but basically it works well), with the contrasting of the static central point and the mass, which is whirling around it, he can put movements into the scales of pictures of life. He makes the whole one vivid, with details, and makes alive the conceptual structure of a moral question. But this immersion, which is similar to space travelling, is so sterile, so similar to a robot, that at the doorstep of Inferno not only the hope bleeding but the flesh and blood reality of the man, who is walking in the inferno. Zénó Faragó’s Dante does not suffer through all his fight together with the Adam of the Tragedy. He remains untouched, he is a paying guest of an attraction on the other world, he is a pensive traveller, who sleeps well, when he returns to the earth. No more dreams can torture him, he will not remember Judas’ body, who was suffering in the pose of the crucified Jesus, the sinful ones, who spit on one another, the greedy popes, and the lovers, who try to hold on to the tornado. Beatrice’s figure does not float in front of his eyes, who Kamilla Fátyol performs with uncertain contours – it is not known, if the purity of the virgin girl, or the cruelty of the dominant woman, who takes revenge on the pain of the world, can take the stress. And Lucifer does not help either, with his own ironic and rational evil nature, just brings him on the road.

The progress and travelling are really illusive, as the spaceship, which is decorated with skulls, is a swivel chair in reality, Dante, Vergil, Beatrice and Lucifer hold on it, and they do not move during the two hours of the performance – but there are not any movements in the layers of existence, just the human stage is dynamic. The inhabitants of the Inferno are going around for a waving rhythm, as a hot pulsation from some kind of crater. The mass sometimes throw a story, a fate, a suffer onto the surface, and the actors of Maladype can express is excellently: Zoltán Lendváczky with his special moving culture, discipline and humour can rule the scenes, which become thick around him, Ádám Tompa with passionate moments, Zsolt Páll is powerful, effective monologues can surprize us, Judit Kovács Ligeti is a little bit theatrical, but she can bring well-formed figures. Next to the performance by the actors, we get Ákos Kerényi and Kornél Mogyoró’s percussion section, with the playing of the drum and gong they take power and structure into the scenes.

But what can we do with this hardly opening text? We can hear the cross-talks, the sentences, which refer to the scandals of social life, to the racism, to the untouchable nature of political elite circle. But the mythological references, some parts of the classical knowledge, which is thicken into short metaphors, the whole structured Dante-like picture of the world, which remain wrapped, untouched all through the performance. The scales of pictures, which are enriched with movements, sound effects, fine scenic elements, are for nothing, if the viewers, who are under thirty cannot decode this thick material of the text – here and there it is made to be more complex with ancient Greek and Italian letters. They cannot see in the powerless main character the poet, who gets through the pictures of the world, who is the symbol of the individual creation, they cannot interpret the vision of the creativity, which is afraid of death and forms the other world.

Eszter Götz, Kultúra.hu, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Dante’s Inferno is a lyrical work anyway, but it is not easy at all to grab the real depth of it visually. The contradiction can be connected to the fact that the pictures, which are created very suggestively, are drawings of situations, which would really give themselves to the visual expression, but they are less important from the point of view of narration. The story, which is told here, is not basically built on the given pictures, but on the static dialogues, which are usually made of only some sentences. The world, which Dante shows us, is just the scale of wonderful, terrible, moving or even funny pictures, which are formed by fantasy, that is why excellent illustrations can be made, as they have been done of it, but Dante’s work is not just the simple drawing of the other world, but it is a human story too. This story of improvement is hard to tell by pictures. There are only a few theatrical of film trials, which have this kind of aim, and even fewer, which can successfully achieve some kind of result.

The performance, Inferno of the Maladype Theatre in Trafó – I think very respectfully – tries to show the changing of the main character, and they outline two kind of stories of improvement. On the one hand, they make sensitive the way, as the main character becomes a true man, who likes even his guilty partners – in connection with Dante, I can say that he becomes a Christian one, but in connection with the whole performance, the humanist is a better expression – on the other hand how it can become poetic. The latest one is the bigger challenge, as it is not usually shown on stage.

But let’s start with the expressed world: the set is simple, only an inferno-like throne stands in the middle of the stage, and swivel chairs are lined up by the two sides. The sound effects of the performance are given by the drums, which are in the background, and there are three colours rule the stage: white, black and red. With the seemingly unstimulating surrounding they can create that kind of depressing feeling, which comes from Dante’s text too: there are not real colours there too, there is not any music or light. But there are guilty people, in million version and endless varieties, and there is the big question: how and why do people become guilty?

The Inferno of the Maladype Theatre, concentrates so much on the showing of the guilty man that here the real set is human too. The moving of the statists, who show the guilty souls, the forms, they create are there to serve the living background to each scenes. And the thousand faces of sin are on the stage: we can see a scale of told and performed stories, which focus on a sin or a guilty one. Everybody gets only short moments, so many times it is not clear that who appears and why. Of course, from the monologues and dialogues we can learn each characters’ names, but we cannot get closer to the recognition of each ones, if we know that their names are Farinata, Cavalcante or Pier della Vigna. Maybe those scenes are the best, which open and bring on the possibility, which is in the text, and actualize strongly the expressions by Dante: the original gluttonous Ciacco here is the funny and terrifying expression of the the consumer society, while in the original one she is flattering whore. Thais is the sarcastic illustration of the almost attracting but disgusting physicality in the play. It is important and pleasing, that the Inferno by Maladype is not realistic and tragic, but it is unrealistic and grotesque: vision and reality live in it together, its comic and insignificance, its greatness and horrible nature. With this point of view they can avoid that incorrect cliché, according to which the Inferno by Dante is the realist representation of the horror of our world: Dante himself – in case of Inferno – is more grotesque and surreal than realistic.

The representation of sins and guilty people are so fast, that we can sense only the continuous movement, but on the stage there is one, solid and motionless point, the middle, where the main character, Dante can live through this whole scale of vision. His leader is the gloomy and strict Vergil, from the back of the throne, who is always above the stage – whose figure is captivatingly formed anyway. He is similar to a clever but depressive teacher, who tell well – maybe a little bit too fast and sarcastically – the study, but he is not very interested in, what the student can understand from it. The student Dante, just seemingly depends on him in this performance: the humanist Beatrice and the clever but cold Lucifer are fighting for the soul of main character – as for Hans Castorp’s soul Settembrini and Naphta are. The guest texts by Thomas Mann are from the Doctor Faustus but they are more similar to The Magic Mountain. The fight is over, when Judas’ at the same time satanic and Christian forms appear on stage. Dante leaves his chair then, to from a vivid sculpture composition with the most sinful one: the expressed picture makes us remember the Pieta, Dante keeps Judas in his lap, as the suffering virgin one does it with Christ, who has got down from the cross, and ensures him, as a suffering one, about his love, independently from his sins. The love, which gains its victory, the humanist Beatrice can take the place of Vergil, of the leader of inferno, on the back of the throne, and that way she can express that from now on, she is above the beaten world of the Inferno.

We can hear two translations of The Divine Comedy in the performance: Vergil tells Mihály Babits’, while Dante – after his first sentences by Babits – and the sinful ones, tell Ádám Nádasdy’s new translation. The language of the two Hungarian translations are very different, but their rhythm and verse – six and half iambic or dramatic iambic – are the same. Maybe that is why I do not feel annoying the mixture of the two translations: which is a little be confusing, it is the fast telling of the text: sometimes it is so fast that it is hard to follow its meaning. Because of it, it is less hearable and sensible that in case of both Babits and Nádasdy the Hungarian language pulses strongly. (The poetic power of the text can be felt the most, when some sinful souls, get out of the continuous moving for some moments, stop and they entrust the effects of the telling of poems with the scenes, and they tell their stories like monologues. During Ulysses’ and count Ugolino’s texts – both of them are performed by Zsolt Páll – for example, we can feel the silence, which fills the auditorium.)

The parallel usage of the two translations may try to express, from the traditional language, which Vergil stands in for, a more modern a newer language can be formed with the help of experiences and walking in inferno, by Dante’s pen, who has become a poet. Maybe that is why the main character changes from Babits to Nádasdy after his first texts.

We can see in this performance as the human and poet Dante can overcome himself, and his own inferno. But maybe it is even harder to show, how he can captivate the world of Paradise. I am waiting for it curiously.

Norbert Mátyus, Kultúra&Kritika, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

In the picture, which was made to be large in front of the auditorium, we can see many hooded figures, grabbing a pistol relentlessly and pointing it at us. Then in the middle of the performance, all of it appears again with similar hooded people as a prefiguration, so we can state that this is the main motif here. It is said that a picture has to be watched for hours, weeks or even months to be able to see its depth. In the Inferno, we do not get that much time, but any kind of random critics could write books about this little montage. Independently from any kind of performances.

Dante is sitting on a huge triple throne with skulls, rented from a fantasy, and in the middle of the flowing darkness he tells many text about the fact that he has got bored with everything in life, and in the end of it he gets down to inferno with his followers. There he can see many very bad things; the sinful ones are lined up there in different ways (The Dante-Inferno scheme is well known from the beautiful illustrations of literature books, in all nine circular structure). Meanwhile Dante can see many famous Greek scientists and philosophers, and he promises a lot to take up into daylight the stories of all those sufferers, who deserves it.

Péter Polgár’s set and Júlia Horányi’s costumes work with futuristic motifs from the middle age, and with that kind of basic ideas of fashion profession that black and red match to each other perfectly, that way the vision is simply beautiful, trendy and cosy. From the percussion instrument this kind of dark middle age atmosphere comes (we can hardly see in front of us the rattling lepers and the freemasons, who are whispering dramatically by the light of the torch). András Szőllősi, the choreographer also moves the grandiose mass of people comparing to the small place, with mostly deep and meaningful reservedness, it is a little bit Hollywood-like, it is a little bit kitschy, but professionally, he draws wonderful, effective pictures. Anyway if the effect is just for itself – as in case of theatre art it is always, until something can add meaning to it – and then it cannot be effective any more just spectacular. The illustration – independently from its beauty – is not content, and for most of the scenes it is enough to be able to show some circles of inferno, and only rarely happens, that they connect a meaning to them (for example, when the suffering ones murmuring a painful rhyme together about greediness).

But the whole performance is similar to a stream of pictures. There are not any characters, figures, people on the stage (it seems to be the conception), there are just grandiose moving pictures, which are changing from scene to scene, without any Greenway-paraphrase like multimedia. It is a kind of set of signs, which seems to get bored of its own compulsion of alienation, and forget to become a structure, and however it gives the appearance of coherence, the big movements, cannot point over the representation of hierarchy. It, because there are not any figures in the story, becomes uninteresting, as it cannot be compared to anything. Maybe the explicitly stated philosophical lesson at the end of the performance, can come from it, about the individuality and other Latin words, as nothing has been shown so far from this kind of “meaning” – however it has to be there somehow. All actual social life-like reference of it (all guest texts, which are strange for the context, would push the performance that way), stand on very weak legs, as from the whole of the performance neither kind of statement can be taken, nor any subject, about which they can be said.

In Zoltán Balázs’ performance all moments of the actors’ grandiose performance are choreography, it can be either the text or the movements. All moments are constructed, all scenes are organised, all moments are steady and stable, all words are heavy and even heavier, all sins are big and even bigger. Apart from some weak trials, there are not any self-irony, there is not any life, and – which we miss from the stage the most – there is not any playfulness. There is only reserved, punctual and gloomy systematic thinking.

Balázs Zsedényi, 7óra7, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

“Otherworld, anniversary, new translation” – we can read them at the beginning of the offer, which is connected to the performance of Trafó. Between the three words, the first one has not got many new information, the second one successfully remains their own work (at least, during the performance there is not any reference to the fact that the ten years old troupe tries to make a part of some kind of “self-mythology” the Dante-like interpretation of the world). Otherwise, the third one shows an important new thing: Ádám Nádasdy has made a new translation of The Divine Comedy by Dante.

Of course, in the performance we cannot listen to the whole Nádasdy’s translation, anyway we can hear some lines from Mihály Babits’ translation and guest texts too. The judgment of the new translation, its critical overview, is not the task of the writer of this critic of course. Which is (also) important, from the point of view of the performance: Ádám Nádasdy brings the text closer not only to the contemporary usage of language, but he keeps neither the Dante-Babits-like structures of rhymes nor the rhymes themselves too – he creates a version of a text, which takes more care of the content than of the poetic nature. Its contrast with the Babits lines are obviously serves the contrast effect. It seems to be a situation, where two eras and two points of view are arguing with one another – this kind of duality can be felt by the central positioning of some characters. From the mass of the characters, four of them are risen: Dante, the traveller, next to him, as a guide, another traveller, Vergil comes, and two other ones, who Dante gets as partners: Beatrice and Lucifer, who stand obviously for the two extreme poles of the introduction.

Almost all elements of Zoltán Balázs’ staging are similarly over thought: the geometrical form, which organises the place, the moving of the volunteering extra characters and their organisation into groups, the rising of actors from the groups, the genderless nature of the characters (or if we like: their androgynous nature without any gender-like characteristics). The atmosphere is perfectly constructed: the lighting, the unified toned view, which is created by only a few tools and the musicians, who are playing percussion instruments (Ákos Kerényi, Kornél Mogyoró) and they can create the mood of entering the inferno with consistent precision. I almost wrote: rite, as the performance has a kind of very strong nature of a rite. Sometimes there is social rite, sometimes the contrast can be felt, sometimes we can hear the monologues by those, who has risen from the crowd, and meanwhile we can be touched by the metaphysical contents of Dante’s text, as well as we can sense the contemporary references too.

But hardly happens anything else than perception. Because, the conception, which is fulfilled with serious artistic devotion, the artistically cold form, can express hardly anything from the beating passion, power, tension of the text. As well as Dante, the viewers are also made to remain an outside observer. As the traveller cannot experience, suffer, accept what he sees, he can only start emotionlessly clever dialogues with his followers. We can hear comments and arguments, without any personality. It seems to be another aim to make the performance, which is lack of all traditional dramatic conflicts and all primer affects, which come from it. For which the performers have all rights to do, but then they should replace it with some other strong effects with different origin.

The tool can be the very coherent visual fantasy, which brakes the lean form. From the poster of the performance, a nice monster-like creature looks down to us; I cannot say that it was likeable for me for the first sight, but after a while, I would really like him to step on stage, even together with his partners. There is a spectacular, whirling crowd, some kind of Greenway-like vision, which tries not to explain the text, but to help us feel it, it can stand in for the lack of tension, passion, personality. (Obviously, the place and technical background of Trafó would be suitable for it.) But in theory I would not exclude the opposite of it. So that the effect of the performance is given by the actors’ presences, and by the power of the declaration of the text. In theory – because in practice it is hard to imagine that kind of artistic power, which breaks the confusion of the stage, which is structure in geometrical forms, and it can stand up against the difficulties, which are caused by the different stylistic level of translations, which are arguing with one another. It can affect the viewers that way to make them forget the need of dramatic nature and formation of situations, let them understand the power of transcendence. It is a difficult task, even if they have to rise up from the crowd for only some sentences, and even more difficult, if they have to keep the accepting attention for a while.

The members of the talented troupe of Maladype, who are gradually formed, have not been able to have that kind of strong presence on stage, suggestiveness, which can make the performance effective on its own. Judit Kovács Ligeti, Erika Tankó, Zoltán Lendváczky, Zsolt Páll and Ádám Tompa can show significantly during some scenes, attitude, fracture of fate, but none of the figures can become really important, we cannot learn about any of them, that why their fate is exactly important from the point of view of the travellers. That way the crowd of the stage, can swallow them easily. Between the characters, who are in the centre, Ákos Orosz and Kamilla Fátyol seemingly try hard, but with less result, to find body for the figures, who are more theoretical than over thought, from the point of view of the stage. Zenó Faragó at the beginning can tell very suggestively Dante’s text, but during the whole performance, he cannot counterbalance the central character’s total passivity. His suggestive outstanding nature, after a while seems to be simply emotionlessness. This latest statement is true in connection with Andrea Ladányi’s Vergil too, who works together with the troupe as a guest star – but with some good will, it can be explained by the emotionlessness of her character too.

The Inferno by Maladype is a properly overthought performance with reliable quality level, which sensibly created with hard work, and leaned on unified teamwork. Zoltán Balázs has worked out, thought over almost everything, except for one thing, that what can give a real tension, importance and deeper meaning for the whole performance. If I want to be optimist, I can tell, that when we get into deeper into the thickness of The Divine Comedy, and we enter the Purgatory or the Paradise together with the troupe, maybe it will becomes clear too.

Balázs Urbán, Ellenfény, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Anyway it was a great relief, when it came out, that not the whole text by Babits would be performed, but instead of it Ádám Nádasdy’s fresh translation is used and they would make the anyway overwhelming text easier to accept with the parts of Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann. As you had to be a man on your foot to understand for the first reading in the school then, this whole translation from the beginning of the earlier century. And at home, in the safety of our comfortable sofa, we can read some sentences again without any punishments. Dante does not have this kind of luck in case of seats during the performance of Maladype. However, the throne, which shows the skeleton of Alien in its ice-cold surreality is breathtakingly imposing and defines in its own the whole unearthly mood of the performance. That is why it is not very likely that for Dante it is a calming feeling to live through captured by the rising ribs of the monster, the inferno of the inferno. Nobody tells, that it would be easy.

Zénó Faragó as Dante tries to make himself believe with tensed body, that he is not afraid, he is not even confused, while he breaks with his thoughts the dimly chewable silence. At the beginning he foreshadows, that he will have to give up all hope by entering the gate of inferno, while Andrea Ladányi as the reincarnation of Vergil’s soul is behind him, while in the background, on the stretched cloth, a frightening faceless troop with dark look close all the entrance from Dante, but especially from us. Ladányi is standing with massive confidence even on high heels, on a small part of the throne, I do not even think about, that this uncharacterized creature can easily falls down from there. As she was sculpted there. She is the only one, who speaks Babits’ language, and she really speaks this elevated, over-coloured on its own, dead language as her mother tongue.

Ákos Orosz’s Lucifer is even more human like. It is hard to tell, how somebody can feels himself at home, on a place, which is his, but he would not wish to anybody being in his position. It is not exemption, but it is understandable, if the actor with painted face, who is turned into a grotesque giant elf, got dressed into skirt and chiffon blouse, is still looking for the answers. From the mouth of the devious host, we can listen to those kind of serious charges against the power, which in spite of the seven hundred years old play, even today can be risen up. His presence becomes solid also by it.

Kamilla Fátyol starts definitely, she shows Beatrice as a powerful, clever and extremely forgiving woman. She repeats the sins more and more wildly, for nothing, finally she expresses, that nothing can be serious enough not to be forgiven. She lets Dante go on his way with these thoughts, than suddenly she is not there anymore. However, she is always there. Maybe, she prepares to lead her love all through the Paradise, where Vergil’s sinful soul is not allowed in.

Zoltán Lendváczky, Ildikó Kovács Ligeti, Zsolt Páll, Erika Tankó and Ádám Tompa can show us, that what kind of fallible souls have got into the circles of the inferno. All of them have characteristics, which could make us momentary forgive them, just because these make us remember our own failed decisions. Meanwhile the hollow-sounding place of Trafó is continuously filled by the flowing mass of twenty-two people, who have been invited as amateurs, but they appear to be professional, they go over us once as suffocating wave, then they make visible as zombies, who are eating bodies and holding each other, the text, which annoyingly wants to make us think over. Ákos Kerényi and Kornél Mogyoró give the last beat of million hearts on their percussion instruments, sometimes with resigned patience, other times with wild desire to break out.

It was a hard, long and tiring evening, but a feeling would remain after it. A thought, which worry me. Leaving the auditorium, the door seems to open directly to the Purgatory. You do not have to believe it, just experience it.

Krisztina Szepesi, Pesti Műsor, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

We can get bored even in a festive mood. During a spiritual dinner, the intellectual courses can disgust us. A pure structure can also become strange in connection with the structure.

The Maladype Theatre, which celebrates its ten years old existence, has chosen a worthy challenge for itself. The leader of the troupe, Zoltán Balázs, who – besides other complex tasks – is willingly start working with the interpretation of monuments, like Faust (however, it was mad by the Puppet Theatre of Budapest), now interpreted the most merciless, the most well-known part of The Divine Comedy, with the help of Judit Góczán, his dramaturg. They have inserted quotes from Thomas Mann and Paolo Santarcangeli into its dramatization. The special curiosity of the performance is, the sign of the activity by the viewers of Maladype, and it is one part of the ingredients of the performance too, that “The »sinful souls«, who are presented in the performance, are voluntary civilians, who did the rehearsals enthusiastically and devotedly together with us, during the last week of the rehearsing period”.

Zoltán Balázs wants great compositions of thoughts and view. He has come from the mystical-religious, judgmental moral vision of the Middle Age (together with some exact – mostly vivid in the lighting and iconographic association of ideas – usage of renaissance reflexes) until the mass questions of the moral science fiction of the Space Age. In case of map using he gets from Péter Polgár’s moderately rising, gothic tall and over-technical part of a set, which follows the style of the XXI. century, from the slow start of the performance, which is frozen to this set and suggests a centre that way, to the dispersant and splashing usage of the stage, which interprets András Szőllősi’s scales of movements as a score. In case of the leading of actors, he uses the declaiming presenter-like text telling as well as the more broken, more confronting, sometimes very dialogical performance of the scenes. According to its style, from the lyrical staging neutral diction with the help of the century old folklore, as it is marked by the modern mass culture too, until the amorphous dynamic form of speech.

That bipolar nature that characterises the experiment can be connected to the Hungarian translation too. The words of The Divine Comedy grab from two sides: with the help of Mihály Babits’ well-known older translation, and Ádám Nádasdy’s just partly published new one, this two and a half hours long spectacle flow of speech. Vergil and at the beginning Dante, got Babits, the others got Nádasdy, however the division is not so rigorous. The difference between the two text, because of their times, and horizon of language and style in case of the Inferno rises up not the question of the different quality of performing, but of the oversimplification. After all the collision is the main topic of Zoltán Balázs’ giant verbally – overwhelming visual theatre. Mostly these are the endless quarrel between the senses of guilt, the concepts of sin, the penances, the punishments, sometimes the aesthetics of sin and joy of them. The whole structures of the view of sins are against each other. The actualisation of their wild argument seems to be easy, but there is not any interesting aims, as it is not written itself into pictures and words of present time scripts: but a seven hundred years old seemingly valid, incredibly complex model would prove its validity.

Even the most experienced philologists can understand without any lack this whole giant historical, artistic and culture-historical material from this condescended and enriched interpretation. The names are going around - Minotaurus, Filippo Argenti, Brunetto Latini, Fallen Angel II, Piero della Vigna, Jesus, Ulysses, Megera, Nicholas III, Francesca, and the others – which mean a difficult lesson of understanding on their own and in their connections too, especially together with the references form Thomas Mann (anyway someone had to translate Mann and Santarcangeli too. Their names cannot be read on the programme, and I am not sure that with hard data searching back in time, we could find anything for sure.) The male (supporting) characters, they are ninety percent of the whole, are owned by women with forty percent (Judit Kovács Ligeti, Erika Tankó) and the actors (Zoltán Lendváczky, Zsolt Páll, Ádám Tompa) perform not only male roles. This so-called usual mixed cast characterises even the volunteering assistance too, very rightly, as those, who got into the Inferno are not mostly men or women anymore. They are creatures. They are souls. They are the remaining parts of creatures and souls.

Who knows why – the answer can be the habits, towards Babits and his translation, our respect, which is partly independent of the quality of the translation in our lyrical knowledge – the poetic sentences by Babits can help us guide more to understand the classical work, than Nádasdy’s does. Babits can settle thing for the modern mental state and ears, while Nádasdy stirs us up. Both of them do their work. And of course, it is significant that these helping lines with their endless lies are told by Dante’s guide from the other world, by Vergil – so by Andrea Ladányi. In her new special role, she is dressed to be provocatively feminine and masculine in a preventing way – in high-heeled shoes, trousers and coat – Ladányi is perfect again. We cannot take our eyes off the whole tension form of Modigliani, off the model of Schiele, off the picture of the human sculpture of Vergil, anyway an animus/anima is talking here with perfect inner concentration, seemingly emotionlessly (even if not according to the meaning of Jung). The farce-Lucifer, who makes us remember Vörösmarty’s imps, Ákos Orosz’s imagined over-moving can be hyperactivity in comparison with this unwaveringness. Kamilla Fátyol, as Beatrice, has got any help or instructions to form the muse into a firm form. Zénó Faragó – because of his bad luck, but not totally by accident – is the most boring character of the four. Dante, who declaims from the depth but without any real life experiences, whose fine lamentation is dispelled many times earlier by the bad acoustic of the Trafó, than it can go up into unimagined highness towards the sky.

It is not fair to talk about over-moving, where all the four main heroes have been burnt into that extravagant catapult, which rises up in the origin of the place. Instead of the half-naked clochard rocker of life, the gangster master (woman), who handles ideas, the butterfly elf in skirt and the erotic leopard (Dante, Vergil, Lucifer, Beatrice) the surrounding crowd of people, the mass is moving, without or by flashing their faces. In Júlia Horányi’s costumes and especially into Ákos Kerényi and Kornél Mogyoró’s music with percussion instruments, which can make a hole on the firmament, we can get lost for minutes, but the Inferno was successful just partly. It is a performance, which tries to solve the over complicated and harder questions of it, by another complications. Over its oratorical and static axle the lava of the guilty ones can go around and bubble moving and elevating, only sometimes. All structuring ideas keep too long and in case of the main appearances, make themselves overused too.

It is a great basic work, a great topic, a great experiment – with poor results from the point of view of Maladype.

Tamás Tarján, Criticai Lapok, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

...the performance has become noticeably bored, the attentions, which have gone away, got back more and more hard...

The Inferno is a very hot part of the world, the Maladype Theatre tells it to us, in their new performance of Inferno: it is here with us on the stage and with us in the auditorium, it watches us, and we watch its strangely similar parts, we recognise ourselves, and the ground starts burning under us. The performance begins well, it slows down, the falls into a calm dream, which makes our mouth water, it understands everything, and agrees with everything.

The greatest surprise of the trailers, that the eight members group of Maladype Theatre, which has not changed for a while – as a guest star – has become nine by Andrea Ladányi, which is not a good omen according to numerology.

Those, who arrive into the place of the performance, are welcomed by a picture of a throne, which is placed into the middle of the stage, there is a handsome, young man on it, with cosy, languid into forced posture. On the top of his throne there are three skulls in regular order next to each other, at one feet of the boy, there is a female figure, next to his other feet there is another human body, by all the three sides of the stage there are black figures in the dark, many of them, and almost invisibly. From the conversation, which is born around the throne, we can soon learn, that here there will be inferno and Faust too soon: this boy will go to the Inferno, to be able to handle well the well-known offer of the ruler of the Inferno.

The text, which has been completed from different places, supposedly with their own phrases too (maybe because of its stylistic mixture), is hard to follow sometimes during the first scene, but at a point of the performance, the viewer, who almost gets asleep because of the heavy verbalism of the initial conversation, gets up. The figures, who are sitting around start to whisper, then they tell it louder and louder, they finally almost yell on the boy, the verdict by Dante, about the resignation of hope, the deep drums can be heard. The boy leaves for the Inferno, somebody starts coughing in the auditorium, he is fighting with it for moments, and who knows why, but it is getting warmer inside.

Zoltán Balázs, the director, builds his performance on view, the reddish black atmosphere, which was made by the deep drums, on the emotionless declamation without any role formations: he celebrates a ritual to us. The basic situation of the rite theatre promises some kind of sanctity and in connection with it something important, common happening too, that is why it cannot bear the ordinary things of actuality. It is a brave commitment. In contrast to it some conspiratorial winking to some actual political term of the play of the Inferno are ordinary, in spite of the fact, that on the level, where sanctities were born, these tiny everyday terms are just small somethings. These refers can be easily detected, so their understanding is not so hard (so it lasts for short) and besides its cheerfulness, they are not followed by big happenings in the auditorium. The heavy cultural political reference can be understood precisely, according to it, none of the creatures, which have been born after Christ, can get into paradise, but those who accept it – besides the momentary self-satisfaction, which is given by understanding – have nothing to do with it. The faceless reflection of the auditorium on the wall in front of the viewers, is for nothing, we can understand our connection with the ones in the inferno for nothing. We get for nothing that when the boy places his own face on the top of the lines of the sculls, he accepts the offer of the inferno anyway (even if he meanwhile declares its clichéd opposition with emotionless, nice words), and no connection has been born in theatre besides the obvious one. The viewers are watching a play in a place, which has been formed especially for it. The sensual pureness of the powerful and sometimes especially witty moving pictures of forms and figures from the inferno, can inevitably create and maintain a kind of unity of the viewers (we can say from those, who sense similarly). However, the understanding of the happenings on stage, which was first fluent, and formed an intellectual community, after a half an hour long performance, became broken, on the most prosaic way. The performance has become noticeably bored, the attentions, which have gone away, got back more and more hard, so fewer and fewer people can follow some moments on the stage at the given time. The sweltering heat is not about the sensibility of inferno for a while, which we have put on ourselves, just about the most prosaic lack of air, the uncomfortable crowding of chairs. It is about the two hundred forints, which we have saved in the cloakroom (the price of it is our coat on our lap) and even the sharp and clear message of the performance can help it anyway. “The Inferno is the Life”, as the performance says it with the overthought sings of the stage, and it supports its message with vivid (more witty and less witty) pictures. With the text, which is not always easy to follow, it evokes the nobodies, those some kind of Somebodies, the One, who eats itself, the offenders of Christianity, those who tear apart themselves and the others, those who cannot hug but always search for each other, but besides sleeping it cannot do much with them. In the auditorium of the Inferno, there is not rite to happen, neither a community is formed, nor works appear in connection with all kind of inferno-like human things, which are well visible, audible and clearly understandable.

The performance of the Maladype Theatre (as many times before) tried to be serious, tried to speak about serious things seriously. The sensible moving picture of descent into the inferno, which has been created inspiringly with rich power of creation, and its more and more cliché-like, many times unfollowable ideas are told on and on, they come and go. The performance just tells its own, while we are waiting in the auditorium for nothing to get the first question in this artistic sea of thesis. So the heads, which have arrived for this conversation, get nodded and they are woken up by the claps.

If we have been made understand something, which we have known by ourselves, which is not less as a knowledge, but as a theatrical performance it is not too much at all.

Ákos Török, szinhaz.net, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Who does not know that the English care the Non-Anglo-Saxon world with a little bit of jealousy, as they can write again and again their own Hamlet and Othello from era to era.

And as all translations are interpretations at the same time, from time to time a new Shakespeare can be born, fixed to the new era and language. Now it is the Italians turn to be a little bit jealous: two new Dante translations are being made, one by Ádám Nádasdy and another one by Ferenc Baranyi.

In connection with The Divine Comedy, most Hungarian readers would think about the name of Mihály Babits for the first time. However, he was not the first one for sure. The glory goes to Ferenc Császár, who was born in 1807, who put the first longer translation on the Hungarian readers’ table. The whole Hungarian version can be connected to Károly Szász’s name, who finished the work by the end of the XIX. century, then he published it in three parts too. Besides Babits, who owned the most well-known and even today used version, Antal Radó’s and Árpád Zigány’s names can be important, who made less successful versions, but their works are very witty and reliable.

The newer translators have to fight most with the poet master of Nyugat, and with his spirit and authority. Of course, tradition cannot be a barrier. As Nádasdy said it: with great respect, but passes it. As someone would like to build a modern church, he must not take care of the gothic cathedral, which is also in the town. However, this “cathedral” is not perfect at all. While Ferenc Baranyi accepts Babits’ monumental work, he would like to create a stylistically loyal version. The well-known poet, translator, has already collected Babits’ “mistakes” and mistranslations in his dissertation of university (“Knowing and going on” Babits translated that way for example in the XXVI. part of the Inferno, while in the original one, it is about the fact, that humans have to follow the way of knowledge and virtue. But the new version cut many of Babits’ stylistic elements, which were characteristic of romanticism too, as they are more characteristic to the XIX. century than to the Middle Ages. So love does not become an easy blight in the new version. Baranyi has also made rhythmical changes: on the one hand, the Hungarian quantitative verse made the text a little bit monotonous, as the original one was written with stressed iambic pentameter. On the other hand, the iambic downing sometimes did not take into consideration, that in case of Italian language it matters (from the point of view of the content too), that which syllable the stress is put on.

The modernisation has brought up other problems too as Nádasdy emphasized it. For example, that since Babits, the readers’ knowledge in connection with religion and the Bible has been decreasing, while The Divine Comedy offers a kind lexicon of different kind of religious references. The new translator has to deal with it too if he wants to bring the story closer to the readers. At the same time, he has to take a stand on an argument, which has been going on for centuries, which is about the fact, that who we have to respect in connection with Dante mostly? The musician poet, whose text is similar to a stick material, and it flows in front of the reader like this? Or the accurate story writer, who describes the journey to the Inferno, as he would take minutes, or as an engineer, who arrives to a technical handover? Dante tried to balance and emphasize the fantastic things, which appear in the story, with this meticulousness and discipline. It is a disciplined pureness, which must be taken into consideration. Seemingly, Babits was less interested in this side of the story, he emphasized its poetic nature, its musicality. However, if we take into consideration the rhymes of the original work, then sometimes, we have to make a concession at the expanse of sense. For example, we write yoghurt instead of kefir, if it works that way, and we does not care about the tiny difference. However, in a technical description it is important if we use nail or screw in the text, and Nádasdy tries to avoid exactly it. Between the Hungarian translations we can find examples for both of them: Babits and Szász preferred the musical version, while Zigány and Radó did the more punctual, ordered version. In Babits’ version, the first part starts like this: “At the half of the Human life / I got into a big, dark forest / as I could not find the right way.” In case of Nádasdy, it sounds like this: “Reaching the half way of my life / I found myself in a dark forest / because I missed the right way.”

According to the poet, linguist the compulsion of rhyme drives the translator’s energy and attention away, and that way he would like to see a more ordered text under Dante’s name. We have not talked about that, the text, which takes into consideration the chains of rhythms, can result in very complicated sentences, as Baranyi warned us, while the original text is easy to understand. At the same time, he pays attention that in contrast to Nádasdy, lets the musical effects work in the Hungarian version. If the outcast ones are crying, then the Hungarian text has to cry the same way, as the original one does it. And he does not let an alliteration get lost, if it is not necessary. For example: “as a dead body, I fell on the ground” as Babits wrote it, but according to Baranyi it would be more loyal that way: as a corpse came collided forever. So the translator’s main viewpoint while he was making the translation was Dante, who is easy to read and loyal to the form, he was the poet. According to him that many versions of the text are not for nothing, as after we have read those many versions, we could get closer to the power and beauty of the original one.

From the Inferno, which is Baranyi’s version, the Hungarian viewers have already listened to some parts in this August. He would like to finish the translation of the most exciting part of the work by autumn (only three parts are missing). However, as our journal has already said, as in case of everybody else, his appetite has come with eating, so he has set his eyes on the Purgatory and Paradise too, but we must afraid of, that his health will not let him translate the whole work. Nádasdy needs two or three more years to make the whole translation. We have listened to some parts of it in the performance of the troupe of Maladype.

It is a strange gesture by Babits. Mihály Babits also got an award for The Divine Comedy, which he translated for ten years, with a minor defect: the award was given by Italy, lead by Mussolini in 1940. The poet, who was seriously ill at that time, could get the San Remo Award by the compulsory rising of his arm (the photo, which was hidden for a long time, now the HVG has published again and mentioned the story.) “This was the last pleasure, the last glory he got” – Sophie Török noted it not long after the death of her husband.

Zsigmond Sándor Papp, Nol.hu, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

...this year more than eighty foreign critics took part on it, the offer was fourteen performances from ten countries, and many following events could make the picture more colourful.

They have organised for the twentieth time in Nyitra an international theatrical festival. They organised the first one in 1992, immediately in the year of the divorce, after the independent Slovak Republic was formed. During the press discussion, which evaluated the anniversary, Andrea Tompa mentioned, that we had missed the occasion, the moment of the changing of system, when we could immediately form, that representative international meeting, which we have missed painfully since then. Since then, the Slovakians have practiced well their own one, the festival of Nyitra has got its place between the counted events, and this year more than eighty foreign critics took part on it, the offer was fourteen performances from ten countries, and many following events could make the picture more colourful. One of them is a three-year long project, which has started now, with the title of Parallel lives, which measures the effect of actions of once existed secret agencies on the performing arts. (The main partner organisation is the Observatory of Budapest.) The topic of the festival of this year is connected to this programme, which main aim is to refresh the memory, on the level of slogans too, which has chosen the title of do (not) tell your secrets, and declares the importance of facing up with the past. Darina Kárová, the director of the festival in the introduction of the programme, emphasised the responsibility of theatre to reveal secrets and sins, and the importance of asking the unpleasant questions in connection with our identity and conscience. I would be interesting in the fact that how many (festival) directors are there in Hungary, who would talk about the mission of theatre that way.

Not all the performances – I have seen all of them except for one – can be connected to the announced topic. The level of the program was complex too, there were exciting and excellent, and there were weak and useless performances too. The aesthetic level was worse than the spiritual one. This latest one was enviably European, in the spirit of its opened, accepting and liberal thinking, which many of us try to ruin in Hungary in the theatrical world too. They held two, sometimes three performances a day. The large auditorium and chamber hall of the Andrej Bagara Theatre of Nyitra, and the two performing places of the Old Theatre were full for all performances, many times people were standing by the walls too. Comparing it to the foreign guest troupes’ many times half-empty houses in Budapest, I really envied it from the town of about eight thousand inhabitants.

Wojtek Ziemilski, visual artist and theatrical person with his one-man theatre, titled the Short story, which is connected directly to the reveal of the past, processes his grandfather’s story, whose past as an agent was revealed in 2006. Wojciech Dzieduszycki was an aristocratic famous person, he was an opera and cabaret singer, he was the well-known inhabitant of Wrocl/aw. The story makes us remember Péter Esterházy’s family story, and now we can regret a lot that nobody could bring to Budapest form Vienna the performance of the Burgtheater, the Harmonia caelestis, which was a theatrically exciting staging, it was praised a lot and directed by Dávid Márton. The Short Story is nothing else than an honest staged reading, followed by video recordings, it connected personal memories, documentaries and cultural quotes, which tried to find the answer of the motifs of the real sin and scapegoating. (The social metaphysic of mass psychosis and exclusion, if with other meaning, have been worked out resoundingly the performance of Hunting Scenes in Lower Bavaria. Róbert Alföldi’s staging was very successful in Nyitra too. Alföldi has gained his name with his earlier works in the festival. Otherwise from the twenty season in Nyitra, we have been presented on eighteen wit twenty performance altogether.)

Between those performances, which were from the self-awareness type, the most interesting one was the performance, We are well together by Dorota Masl/owska. The young author is well known in Hungary too, the Kamra performs his play, The two poor Romanians, who spoke Polish. His facing up with the past, is one of the important motifs of the contemporary Polish drama, which was made special by the author’s age, who is in his twenties. If we can listen to his generation with the help of him, then he tells something about the Polish society, which can make us jealous again. In the play, three generations live together, next to each other – metaphorically too – these are the generation of the war, the adults of the “existing socialism” and the contemporary young ones. This play is more text-centric, than in the case of the play, The two, who spoke Polish. It was not easy to follow neither with the English subtitles – partly because of the size of the letters and the bad position of the monitors – but it could become clear, that its texture is strongly reflected and sarcastic. (Soon it will be performed in Bárka Theatre.) Masl/owska could handle with sarcastic irony the stereotypes of thinking and way of life of the generations one after another, and he stated a sharp critic in connection with the Polish nationalism. In the funniest part of his performance, one of his characters “proved” that everything in the world is polish, but it had been stolen, expropriated and made for themselves their inventions, symbols, discoveries and even their colours. I could imagine, how would this kind of manifested ironic critic of the Polish achievements be accepted in its Hungarian version at home. TR Warszawa Theatre ordered the play from the author, and the internationally respected Grzegorz Jarzyna directed it, with distinctly anti-naturalist style, with grotesque clichés, in a stylized place, with computer graphics, with sharply made performance. (In the end of November because of the invitation of the National Theatre, they will perform it in Hungary too, differently from the version of the book, with the title of: Everything is in order.)

The performance of Cool and dupe ones, by the SkRAT Theatre from Bratislava, was made according to the example of the performance like the Top Dogs or the Push up 1:3. Middle leaders, mostly women are in the focus of sketch episodes, there are managers, yuppies, official faces, with their own ordinary personal and social affairs, stereotypes and banalities. The cliché like nature of behaviours are directly proportional with the performance, its grotesque nonsense humour, which turns into absurd, can be sensed in the best moments. The contrast of employer-employee and women-men (in both cases mostly with the emphasis of the female supremacy), can appear in a kind of lazy, life-like, in a style far of staging, the set was made according to the program of black and white block of flats. We could not deny that the performance had some kind of insular humour, in the end, the (female) guard, with disadvantage outlook, who represented the scorned “lower class”, left alone on the stage, which was noise because of the axe blows, as it was done in case of Firs in The Cherry Orchard – but most it was all about this.

If we have already mentioned clichés, than the Forced Entertainment’ parodic meta-theatre with the title of Void story (we can say: Not any kind of story) was more interesting and entertaining. Four actors were sitting on the two sides by the control desks, as they were sitting in radio or recording studio. In the middle, the pictures are on a projector screen, the actors partly gave their voices to them (they read up the characters’ texts), and they created the noise effects too. The scale of pictures, and the “film”, which was made of them, mixed the style of photos, drawings, comics, graphic collages, animated films, and told a story that way, which could be called mostly a surreal horror (we can say that with the mood of Lynch and Kubrick). There was a boy and a girl in the maze of urban surrounding. They were walking, travelling, escaping (from some kind of murderer) on the street, in the channel, in the hotel, in an elegant meeting – anywhere. Tim Etchell, who is the animator, script writer, photo-shop maker and director of this performance, with this radio-play, subbed film and theatre, could create a performance that was favourable to creators and performers of post-dramatic theatre theory, which the ordinary humans could enjoy too, if they did not get bored before. As all kind of style performance, it could be figured out soon, and later it could keep only a few surprises. It could last any time – in reality it was one hour and twenty minutes long – it was mostly technically surprising, than a sensual experience.

Between the performances of the festival, we could watch two Slovakian “remake”. One of them had put in bracket to the title the word of remake, to mark that their performance was the ironic interpretation of Jozef Holly’s Kubo, classical and legendary comedy. The story, which took place in a surrounding of a village, showed intrigues of love, and the main character, who was thought to be partly silly but he was clear and innocent, became the part of them, somehow. The mostly simple story, the director, Dodo Gombár performed stylised, loudly, he coloured it with tiringly monotonous and repeated mannerisms. He duplicated the figure of Kubo, with a middle-sized marionette puppet, but he did not explain well its meaning. The other “re-performance” was The Graduate, which was the renewal of the more than forty years old film by Dustin Hoffman, which we know by the title of Before Graduation. The stage version of it was made totally indifferently and unconvincingly, which was put obviously into the programme, because it is the performance of the local Old Theatre.

Another performance of the Andrej Bagara Theatre of Nyitra, by Wesker, showed a more favourable picture, it was The Kitchen, staged by Zoltán Balázs. He formed the studio tall domed place into a podium of a circus. The viewers were sitting in circles around it. The podium was covered by fine, white, sand, which was similar to the sand of the seashore. There were copper plates hanged from above – like mine upside down turned cymbals – they stood in for the equipment of the kitchen. In front of the “chefs” many “plates” were hanged on different levels. They were “cooking” sand, which was held in bags next to the chefs. The waitresses were filling the bags continuously, and they were bringing up and down the piles of empty plates. In the middle there is a big pool of sand. By “mixing” with the little brooms of “cooking” and pushing-salting-forming by hands the plates became clear by the sand – the portions were made in this way. The chefs hits the hanged up metals, and gave a sign to the waitresses that way. All of it happened according to the composed choreographed order, which we have known well by Zoltán Balázs. The chefs’ and waitresses’ Japanese costumes were made according to the director’s favourite far-eastern style, between the colours of black and white, the owner of the restaurant, Mr. Marango’s – in this performance he was a woman – red dress came up. He was sitting all through the performance on a podium, by the “main entrance”, he was reading popular magazines, and according to his role, he only at some points of the performance, got involved in the performance. (The set and costume designer of the performance is Péter Polgár, he got both awards as the two best ones of the previous season in his both categories. The national awards of the Slovakian theatrical seasons are usually given on the opening gala of the Festival of Nyitra, it happened that way now too, it was followed by a nice, intimate and pure performance.)
The Kitchen was the best performance I have seen by Zoltán Balázs recently, in which the verbal texture of the play was connected to the director’s skills of choreography and to his visual stylization. Carefully composed effects of movements and sounding gave the base of the visual aesthetics. The actors fulfilled not only the physical requirements, but they were experienced in the category of dramatic theatre too, so they not just had phrases of the performing as a profession, but practice of it too. According to my taste, there were too many artistic things in the performance and too little articulated ideas, I could tell that there were too many beautiful orders, and there were too little simple statements (and according to it sharp surprises), but it was a subjective question, but otherwise I appreciated gladly the accepted and fulfilled theatrical level.

The Weissenstein performance of the Comedy Theatre from Prague was an aesthetic pleasure. Earlier they had performed Kafka too, and this time – during their German season – they made a performance from the one hundred pages long prose by one of Kafka’s peers, by the less well-known Johannes Urzidil. He was the member of the expressionist movement of Prague between the two world wars, whose play was about a third peer of them, who was the main character of the play too. Karl Weissenstein, who is a well-known member of café of literature in Prague, he is strange, egocentric, shy, he was a figure, who could not take responsibility for his actions, who “always wanted to become someone else, as he could not be himself”. As he got involved in others’ fates, he caused their death somehow – according to the play, three people’s too. This version of the play was made by the director, by David Jarˇab. It is a miniature play for studio stage, with only a few, marked set, fine, bittersweet humour, irony and intimate atmosphere. The main character was played by three “similar” actors, in the same dresses, with the same “empty heads” – Weissenstein was suffered from the illness of hydrocephalus – that way he divided the character into three parts. The three figures got into vivid communicative relationship with one another, they followed their thinking and decisions with tiny comments and gestures, they almost shared it between them as their things to do. It is a very tiny, micro-realistic and elevated staging at the same time, the effect is humorous and tragic at the same time – it is a real elite artistic theatre, and it is very entertaining from this point of view too.

The two most interesting performances of the festival were (besides the Hunting Scenes, which must be on the podium) not accidentally two theatrical performances of directors by Oskaras Korëunovas and Kama Ginkasz. Korëunovas put on stage The Lower Depths by Gorky, however, this latest one was all about exaggeration, as there was not any stage. The characters were sitting behind a table, which was put an arm long distance from the first line of the viewers – as during The Last Supper – only some of them stood up, changed their places, or told something to the viewers. The actors told, during the next day meeting, that because they did not have enough time, the rehearsals were kept during the common tours of the troupe, for example after breakfast, they stayed by the table in the restaurant of the hotel – and the “scenic” of the performance was formed that way. The constraint became a natural conception, the civilian, those figures, which were made Russian by only some properties, seemed to live on their ordinary lives, they talked with that kind of natural directness, and they behaved according to it too. This manner, which was “without any performance”, theatrical, and was hardly different from the civilian existence – their “own voice” – stood in for a special trend in theatres today. Gorky’s characters could get rid of not only the natural formalities that way, but of the poor romanticism. In the “depth” – the original title of the play – it meant the hopelessness of existence, and the moral rise of weaknesses, which came from this position. There is something beautiful and tragic-comedic in the ethos of these people on the edges. For example, the actress, who performed Nastya, talked to a handsome young man in the auditorium, and almost begged to stand up from his seat. Just to stand up. This direct searching for relationship tried to be the manifestation of that latent try that they tried to perform in the direct closeness with the audience, almost breathed into their face. The one, who performed Satin also came to drink vodka with the viewers in the name of the “brotherhood”. The emotional saturation, the Slavic passion could be found in the performance too, the drinking could solve the anger – there were many vodkas on the table – the singing and dancing, which began in the narrow place, was filled with repressed energies. The Actor, who drank his “organism” too, and tried many times with efforts to find the lost words, he came back after his suicide, and told the inspired lines from Hamlet’s mixed monologues.

The biggest format of the festival was an originally Lithuanian, but Russian director, Kama Ginkas who made from the Medea by Seneca – with the usage of the texts by Anouilh, Brodsky and others – a special, powerful and impressive performance, in the Theatre of Young Viewers from Moscow. The premier effect itself came from the vision, which is a surreal collage on the stage in the stylized “bathroom”, which placed on a really big area – the actors had to get through the pool, which was risen to the level of the floor – and with the kitchen tools, between the other together with a cooking and baking properties, which were placed on the hill of lava, which rose in the middle, and formed like stairs. The performance both visually and textually, and with the distant alienation of actors’ speech, could offer typical “postmodern” interoperability between eras, stiles and ways of thinking from the mythological until the profane ordinary things, from the pathetic ones to the grotesque, from the tragic elevation to the reflexive didacticism. It could take us into some kind of connection of thinking and style, and then ruined them all in any moment. It shocked and disenchanted us. With its accepted eclecticism could always raise surprise. Medea first appeared as a Muslim terrorist, she was dressed like this, with her baby on her back, there was the equipment of suicidal act on her belt, maybe because the director could not let the costume designer’s well-made costume, who insisted to his own idea (As Ginkas himself told it during the meeting of the following day), or because he wanted that the assassin’s attitude effected the main character’s similar “murderous” mental terror too. (In his civilian speech, Ginkas was characterised with that same kind of mischievous, partly provocative characteristics, as the director was on the stage.) The Nanny was reading a magazine in the corner of the “bathroom”, however Creon entered with giant, frozen, installation of power signs, with that royal decoration, which he left in the middle of the pool, and it remained there “crying”, and the suited, civilian office worker with his bag, the old man, got out of under it.

The mental central point of the performance was the spoiled marriage, the reason of which was the irreconcilable difference between Medea’s aggressive desire of possession, her creature that was built on the desire for completeness (that later expression came from Ginkas himself) and Jason’s ordinary character of an everyday person. (The handsome husband, with greyish hair, arrived in ironed suit and with shopping bags, he seemed to arrive from the closest plaza.) The most exciting parts of the performance were their typical dialogues from The Scenes from a Marriage. In front of Igor Gorgyn’s Jason, who was elegant, simply muscular, who desired only shy and trouble-free life – tidy flat, outings at the weekends and holidays by the see – there is Jekatyeri-na Karpusina is Medea, who was frighteningly unpredictable, explosively womanish and wildly aggressive. She connected the childish flattery and the rude pushing on, sometimes she is lyric, dramatic, lost-like crying, than angrily arguing. She is an extraordinary actress. She was chirping soprano and dark alto from the depth one after another. She could change capriciously the tone and the mood. Her restlessness could be seen as she could never stay in a place, she walked hectically on bare foot, up to the hill, into the water, she laid down, curled up then jumped up again, she kicked the objects in her way, she put here and there the papers of her voluntary exile, which were waited for signature. At the dedicated points of her reflexive playfulness, she left her role, she pointed at her singing partner, “here is the tragic Russian actor!”, said it sarcastically, then she read demonstratively from Brodsky’s poem. During the ending sequence she unwrapped and dressed down her two babies that were “made of” pink plastic, she cut their throat with a knife, and in a transparent plastic bowl made them swim in the pool – where they fell off it. She lighted up the water, poured with petrol, then put on an elegant dress, and tided into a strap, she flew over the stage.
It was a recklessly, brutally and openly provocative performance.

Tamás Koltai, Élet és Irodalom, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)