Kovács Ferenc: Olvasópróba előtt (Skenotheke 1. Budapest, 1996)

Felhasznált irodalom

long ago floated away: the son, in the frenzy of a momentaiy love affair, turns his back on all three of them and leaves. There is a final conflagration: the violent struggle and self-torture of three abandoned people, until the strongest of them, Borkman, perishes broken by the tragedy." (Iván Sándor, Film Színház Muzsika, Sept. 24,1965) "An old play shouldn't be re-staged unless it in some way or other deals with universal human issues and has a message for a present-day audience, ... if the play raises problems which are alien to us, and it is unable to communicate to us ... then its re-staging is a dramaturgical misstep. The director, István Horvay, has given the play a romantic, pathetic feeling instead of toning it down, which would have been much more desirable. The dialogue, although charged with sentiment, was empty. The surprisingly strong applause after the performance was primarily a tribute to the renown of the actors and not to the show." (Tibor László, Jövő mérnöke, Nov. 1,1965) "Ibsen has made only a half-hearted attempt to show up for the season-opening performance of Vígszínház, and neither has the talented director lived up to his abilities. ... John Gabriel Borkman, the ex-convict and one-time bank manager, stands by the snow-encrusted overlook taking a measure of the horizon. What precious minerals he could have extracted from the depths of the earth, how many people he could have made happy had he but attained the power he desired." (A.G. Esti Hírlap, Sept. 17,1965) "Arguably this is one of Ibsen's most enduring plays, and the staging is highlighted by such scenes as the heated dramatic clash between the two women, whose suffocating dialogue is an apparent duel between soft lyricism [Ellal and unyielding stubbornness [Mrs Borkmanl, but is, in fact, a representation of wishful thinking versus reality." (Imre Demeter, Hétfői hírek, Sept. 20,1965) "'It is the voice of profound, never-ending, eternal human sorrows which is choked with emotion here; the tragedy of all eternity casts a dark shadow on the black slab of granite into which the poet has carved his immortal words.' (Aurél Kárpáti) The re-staging in Vígszínház treated Ibsen's work with due respect, which might easily have been more than was called for.

... They ought to have found a way to bring Ibsen's world closer to the audiences of today and to highlight in a more up-to-date way the play's perennial thoughts concerning man and the world." (Ervin Szombathelyi, Népszava, Sept. 16,1965) 43