Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
György Lengyel: Two Tragedy Production
GYÖRGY LENGYEL TWO TRAGEDY PRODUCTIONS The Tragedy of Man in the life of a stage-director „The images of great poets appear differently through different eras: masterpieces keep changing with changing times. If this were not the case, they would not be masterpieces, for this capacity for change is the proof of their vigour and viability. Perhaps what we derisively call subsequent interpretation is but the place the poet or the masterpiece is allotted in later periods — almost always aggressively, and often artifically” — wrote Sándor Hevesi in this work The Real Shakespeare. Among the masterpieces of classical Hungarian drama and poetry the Tragedy of Man is the standard work which lends itself best to revivals, providing an inexhaustible source of changing inspiration for every style and for every generation of actors and directors. In this way the Tragedy has inspired countless stimulating performances in the last hundred years, both in Hungary and abroad. The different casts and stage directions made each production different. Evoking the memory of two prdductions, I wish to supply some data for the definitive study that is yet to be written on the subject. As the two productions data from very different social and artistic periods I shall approach them in two different ways. In the first case my intention is a simple registration of the event, in the second an attempt to analyze it and to raise the problems of stageng. The two points in time are: the schoolyear of 1953—1954, and the theatrical season of 1980-81. (The person who revives these events was 17 on the frist and 44 years old on the second occassion.) In autumn 1953 the prestigious Madách Imre secondary school in Budapest decided to put on the Tragedy. At that time the Tragedy had been on the waiting list of theatrical life for several years. 61
