Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
László Vámos: Open-air Performances of The Tragedy of Man
forty metres. The spankling light it disperses provides the „Heavenly Radiance”. The Angels stand in the windows of the Church in the full width of the square in varying heights of from eight to twenty metres. The space in front of the Church is dark. When the Lord speaks about the „Forbidden Trees” „in the heart of Eden”, the two trees (embossed copper plate) slowly rise on the face of the two central towers of the Cathedral, and the Frist Man and Woman become gradually illuminated. Lucifer starts his descent from the heights of the Angles toward the Earth, with the audience able to trace his descent. The Lord and the Angels stay in place during Scene Two (Eden) as well. The transition between Scene Two and Scene Three (Eden, and Outside of Eden) is likewise continuous. At the end of Scene Three Lucifer bids Adam and Eve to sleep, and they lie down up in front, on mid-stage. Between them and the audience, reclining in a similar position on the trap-door, a pair of stand-ins are raised to about 60 cm above stage level, thus covering Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve slowly rise and separate in a fade-out and they set out as it were into their dream, in which gradually the outlines of Egypt take shape. Adam is cloaked in the Pharaoh’s robe, and he ascends the throne. The two sleeping figures have vanished, but re-appear again at every change of scene, thus punctuating the sequence of scenes and makint the Dream series clear even to those in the audience who do not know the play. The reclining pair of stand-ins are illuminated whenever during the play Adam and Lucifer are engaged in argument and there is a temporary break in the Dream. In Rome the centre of the Bacchanalia is a statue of a fawn on whose knees and lap Dancing Girls move. This statue crumbles when a Cross about 8 metres high appears in a glow of radiance on the roof of the Cathedral to the right, and a procession of torchbearers — the funeral procession with the Peter the Apostle at the head — descends to the revellers on stage. At the end of the scene the Cathedral gate opens, and Peter takes Adam into the sanctuary of the church. In Constantinople a stake is burning under the earlier Cross, and the burnt bodies of heretics rock in the wind. The Patriarch comes out from the church accompanied by High Priests. (Religion 58
