Király Nina - Török Margit: PQ '95. Magyar színpad - kép - írók (Budapest, 1995)

A változás színháza 1991 - 1995

hose, they chop off heads with a cleaver and they hang victims unto the side of pork sorting chain — this is only a fraction of the sarcastic ritual — the major point is rather conveyed by the representation of the ritualized forms of human behaviour.

First of all by the representation of the leading character, Edward II himself, who steps out not of the Renaissance but Medieval Gothic with his statue like, motionless face, the calm, simplified poses of his posture, the economy of his gestures. Out of this archaic figure, contrary to the rules of psychological realism, unexpectedly, instinctively, irrationally passions and uncertainties burst out, primarily the homosexual ardour towards his boy minion which fundamentally casts his human/kingly disposition, his attitude to reigning. The players are parts of the historic mincer; they step out of the mass, and are absorbed by it again when after their death they are incarnated in new roles. Thus the former executioner becomes the new victim and the former victim turns into the executioner. In the background, on the patch of the stage the historic slaughter-house is located, in the foreground, on the narrow strip of land that protrudes into the audience the players of the archaic chronicle plays appear supporting their favourites the way pretty much known to us, causing dissent, whining for power, chopping off one another and changing their opinion as their momentary interests require. Filthy little killings, the wretched mediocrity cast for historical role, — that is how the face of reality is shown in the theatre by Doctor Christopher Marlowe, butcher and slaughterman.

In Danton's Death by Georg Büchner (1993) the children of freedom gobble up one another. When it really comes to children who are throwing heads up in the air like balls, the drama gets even rougher. In the Chamber, the studio of the Katona József Theatre the piece is played by 'under age' players. The premature disappointment in history shaping ideas — as a typical feature of a specific age — is always highly tragic. The performance implies, in the first place, adolescents’ loathing at seeing the disgusting moves of the political general staff. It is possible, of course, to say that today's political elite is characterized not at all by the Jacobite determination of Saint-Justs and today's struggles are not fought till blood is shed, the republican idea has not yet fallen; for the time being a game, much milder than the guillotine, of ousting one another from position is being played. Yes, but outside the convent there is always a street — as it is there in the setting of the performance — and the two are usually working in a juxtaposition with peculiar changes of close-ups and long shots. Even if the street is - for the time being - empty.

It can be well observed that the endgame in the performance — the merciless ritual of teeth shattering fear in prison and going off to death — is so much more worked out than the representation of the path leading up to it, the nausea and the manipulative faction fights. It is possible that the latter is due to the inexperience of the young director, but it cannot be wholly excluded that the intention to demonstrate something is also involved, some gesture that alienates one from the mechanism of making politics. This

youngish malaise may thus convey genuine message to the present day. We must take the desperate disillusion that is flowing from the performance seriously. When the order that creates democracy out of dictatorship swallows up its own children one after the other, when public life 'purified' of its best ones, when all human values get buried by the society reformers' corpses thrown into the lime-pit, then the widow of the most honest republican cries out with stubborn frenzy: 'Long live the King!' This desperate sentence, which in the midst of disillusionment, calls for the restoration of 'ancien régime' is rarely voiced in such a frightening manner as in the performance of the Chamber.

Another group of performances making politics pry into crimes committed in the past and the responsibility of the guilty and searches for possible ways of forgiving and social reconciliation. It is understandable at a moment when the question has not been soothingly settled whether those who are responsible for the volleys fired in the 1956 revolution can be identified at all, and if they are, they are to be held responsible legally or morally. How far does jurisdiction reach and where does inhuman revenge begin? Where does it take us if the past can not be shut down and the opponents, social groups who are unable to become reconciled with one another do not cease maintaining the atmosphere of accusations and hatred?

The most famous classical tragedy on the exploration of the past is the ancient crime drama Oedipus the King by Sophocles (1992). The performance of the fringe Independent Company has underlined that it is all about the tragedy of a family, which takes place as a public event in front of the community, and made it unambiguous that today there is no longer such a community as there used to be in the antiquity. The core of the interpretation of the drama of the Comedy Theatre (The Tent, 1994) is that Oedipus is one of us, a simple young man, the word 'king' has been left out of the title of the tragedy, who has come into the possession of power by accident through his natural resourcefulness. When he has to face his own crimes committed on the path to power, first he childishly attempts to push the consequences aside, then yielding to merciless laws and the mob's, the public opinion's, pitiless cruelly, acquiesces in his own destiny: punishment. The performance implies that even the most innocent man will be turned both guilty and, at the same time, a victim by becoming part of the machinery of power. Obviously it is by no chance that at the end the blind Oedipus staggers off the stage pulling the 'skin' of the Sphinx behind, who he has killed. The, possibly, intentionally depoliticized performance, in which ceremonial and realistic motifs follow in turns, is a kind of requiem for the average person 'mingled' into politics.

The motif of crime and revenge appear in the first play of Heinrich von Kleist entitled The Schroffenstein- Family; or The Revenge (1994). It was presented by the Studio of Budapest Chamber Theatre. The story is actually a paraphrase version of 'Romeo and Juliet'. It depicts the arduous hatred going on between two related families. The plot commences with one family

accusing the other of murder and swearing to commit revenge, although it is revealed that the hostility goes back much earlier. Actually no one knows when the whole thing started, neither what aroused it. Irrational passions end up in bloodshed. The victim of the bellicosity, in the same way as with Shakespeare, is a loving couple: the daughter of the head of one family and the son of the head of the other. This kind of having a grudge against one another with no reason at all, which is depicted by the performance in some cases ironically, vividly resembles the political clashes that are taking place in our public life between the wagon camps of the opposing views.

Sometimes milder parables help to interpret the present. Samuel Beckett's classical absurd play.

Waiting for Godot is now on at the Art Theatre (1994). The metaphor of waiting and chasing illusions ready for various interpretations is not a dry theorizing in this performance. The two leading star actors do not recite the obligatory Beckett-catechism. They want to represent life not philosophy. Two clochards at the wrecking yard. On the road they make up one another for the part of clowns. One of them is in Russian cap with flaps, the other is in a long, black coat. They get dressed out of their historical memories. The waste disposal site is just another pile of the past's props. The wreckage of a Trabant, a piece of road-block, unidentifiable grafitti on the horizon beyond the country road of nowhere land. In the stage setting layer comes upon layer of thrown out junk of revolutions and the East-European barracks. When Vladimir says that 'we blew our rights' and puts the faded flag of the national tricolour, cut out in the middle, ripped off of its staff, round his neck, then it is quite obvious that he refers to the nostalgia of 1956 buried in the past, in many respects unrestorable. With his fool's cap-crown he looks like an unemployed King Lear whose country has been taken away from him. His ponderings are filtered through the philosophy of a no-good nik, former intellectual ham. Beside him Estragon stuck to realities is the eternal man-in-the-street: egocentric whiner who always gets beaten up. At the end when they seem to run out of their patience in waiting for Godot, they sit right out nearly among our good selves, a little affectedly, a little defiant, a little just-for-the-fun-of-it way, in front of the curtain. Estragon provocatively looks up to the sky like someone who means to say: what do you want, how long should we wait here, how long do you string us along, we can manage without you just allright! This doing away with illusions resembles the general atmosphere that hovers these days around us. The two down-and-out loafers who have been put out into freedom on the edge of the road are - us.

The most subtle, metaphoric version of theatre timeliness is represented by the productions directed by Tamás Ascher. The cast of Le Misanthrope (Csiky Gergely Theatre, Kaposvár, 1991) wear the costumes of the period of the performance. This is vieuxjeu, it has been used before. What is new in it is that Ascher does not look for today's equivalents of the upper-middle class characters of the play, or it is possible that he is searching for but cannot find them. The Misanthrope is now played not in Céline’s snobbish