A man is sitting in front of fifty and he is reading up for two and half an hour. This statement is true that way, that it is not true: in front of Zoltán Balázs there is a thick package of papers, sometimes he turns the pages, but he tells all of them by heart. Sometimes he improvises, condenses, creates shocking and memorable moments, overwhelming stupidities and heart-breaking stories come one after another. The viewers feel awkward because of it, they are moving on the chairs, then they get into again and again the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1940s. The viewers of the new performance of Maladype can be part of a tiringly exciting confrontation, who can comfort themselves at the end of the performance: “at least I have read” Kravchenko’s old-new book of 1946, which was published in Hungary with a delay of seventy years – with Péter Konok’s translation, and the publishing of the troupe. While they are going home, they enter a pub and philosophise about the fact, that how adequate a not reading evening can be – then the next day they cannot put the book down. The disturbing stresses of the performance, which has burnt into their mind, are echoing in them, and the surprisingly realise, that how many important parts are missing. It is necessary as Kravchenko’s epic is 800 pages long. The later readers can think about the fate of the books again. The Soviet functionary, who “deserted” during the second world war, wrote down for nothing once – we have already known that he did it precisely – the mechanism of Socialist system, the makers of world politics thought his book to be exaggeration. It was not, it was the crystal-clear reality. The Soviet State Security that was patient in case of revenge too, in 1966 in New York – pretended to be a suicide act – shot a revolver bullet into the writer’s head.

Gábor Murányi, HVG, 2015

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)