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

has veered round; it is no longer a progressive force.) In this scene use is made of the Dimitrius Tower from the 13th century as a most appropriate cloister. Tancred’s troops ride in on horseback, and the witches do fly.

In Prague, Kepler’s observatory is on the ten metre dais to the right (where the Guillotine grows out from the back ot the chair in the Paris scene). A garden party is taking place on stage level. There is no break in the play between Prague and Paris, and then again between Paris and the second Prague scene. The Crowd in Paris rolls through the stage with carts and carriages, they carry huge King and Queen effigies — with tottering heads, and dance around these figures. Bonfires are lit.

In the second Prague scene, which is actually a long dialogue between Adam and a Pupil, the open-air stage management picks the one whom Kepler summons out of a group of students.

From Kepler’s observatory rises the Tower in London, and thus the ideological continuity is made clear between Prague II and London. In London the church is a church again, and the fair takes place in the full width, depth and height of the stage.

In the London death scene, which is always a problem to directors, we have tried to come back to the original instruction by Madách; the entire Fair turns into a Cementery,so that phosphorescent crosses appear in place of the Fair, from a height of about 5 meters to 20 meters, and this height gives the impression of depth — of a big expanse of ground. On stage level — that is, apparantly underground — a multitude of skeletons move around in a macabre fashion in a quickening tempo, and pull and sweep in the cast and the extras from the higher level to the stage - which appears as underground.

In the flight through Space, again the two Cathedral towers are seen, and between them „fly” two figures that look like Adam and Lucifer. Their voices are heard from the height where they seem to fly.

The Adam of the Eskimo scene tears himself from the arms of the Eskimo’s wife, casts off his fur cloak, and there stands the youthful Adam of the palmy landscape just outside of Eden, and next to him lies Eve.

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