Cassiope: The piece is in the hand of Russia
After a long time, we can see Zoltán Balázs, the leader the director of Maladype Theatre, as an actor again. It is worth waiting so much, as in the role of Victor Kravchenko he can show passionately, one of the most horrific half centuries of Russia.
Zoltán Balázs, the leader of the Maladype Theatre, has chosen an unimaginably dense text for himself when he decided to make up a “one-man manifesto” from Victor Kravchenko’s book, which is more than 800 pages long. In reality, the evening is not a mono-drama, as it must be more theatrical, and would keep the theatrical form in its characteristics. But it is neither a reading theatre, as it seemed to be for the first sight, because of the presence of the table, the chair and the script. It is something else, it is more personal, more intimate. The performer’s enthusiasm towards Kravchenko is well known, as the book was also published by the care of Maladype in November.
In the autobiography of I Chose Freedom, everything can be found, which Kravchenko experienced during the total soviet terror, it follows through and tells his road from starvation until the peak point of wealth, it shows detailed the structure of the system of informers, a paralyzed society, where everybody is afraid of statements. The material is interesting and exciting enough but a dramaturg would have been useful for its adaptation. The language of a book is totally different from the one of a performance. We get many names of towns, abbreviations, complicated sentences, which we are unable to remember or pronounce, while the actions are going on, and Zoltán Balázs dictates a very fast tempo for it all. He throws us into deep water, but himself too with us. In his artistic disposition it is always impressive: he does not just push the borders of his viewers, but his own ones too. Some can handle it and they are not swallowed by the flow of text – some are less receptive, if they find themselves at once in the deep water.
The tempo is frightening only for the first time. The text is very dense and concentrated, but the artistic playfulness can balance the scale. Zoli Balázs is Zoltán Balázs and Victor Kravchenko at the same time. In the totally narrowed place of theatre we can sit very close to him, he sits all through the performance, and he makes huge gestures, speaks fast, asks questions from us, he is in continuous contact with the viewers. He stops the text many times, and asks if it is understandable, can we follow it, or he should sum it up shortly, if our heads are totally full of with the great amount of information. We can learn to swim together with him with slow, but confident movements, even if we cannot remember the names of all the towns, but the similarly complicated names of characters we can anyway, and our mind slowly get used to it. He never gets out of his character, he is presented here as Kravchenko, behind whom for some moments Zoli Balázs winks out. Anyway, this kind of duality is rare in the Hungarian theatres, when actors identifies with their characters, they perform so much. Here he can hardly perform, the place is so small, as a close-up of a camera: it denies anything which is false. All over performed gestures or mimes. Zoltán Balázs is brilliant because of it, because he can do it all without any kinds of affectation, “he does not do it as an actor”. He reacts spontaneously to the outside world, there is not any planed, found out concept in advance. He is there simply, with his own natural nature, exists, while he shows us Kravchenko’s experiences, goes through the heaven and hell. He is a patriotic teenager, and then an enthusiastic and successful member of the party, who builds the system, because of it his personal life becomes impossible. We can see the different social levels of the Soviet Union, a system, in which Stalin himself is afraid, the horrible things of the war, the interrogations, questionings, show trials. He is sent to be a spy in the United States, but then he chose freedom instead. His belief in the country, nation is shaken at all, and he leaves his homeland.
In spite of it, the first part is not lethargic and sad, there are some love stories in it too. The second part is shorter, but it has a tragic atmosphere. Zoltán Balázs says goodbye to his homeland with choking voice and welled up eyes. His closing lines he repeats together with the viewers: “Without a free democratic Russia, there can be no enduring peace on earth.”
A more effective ending could not have been found out anyway.
Cassiope, index.hu, 2015
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)
Zoltán Balázs, the leader of the Maladype Theatre, has chosen an unimaginably dense text for himself when he decided to make up a “one-man manifesto” from Victor Kravchenko’s book, which is more than 800 pages long. In reality, the evening is not a mono-drama, as it must be more theatrical, and would keep the theatrical form in its characteristics. But it is neither a reading theatre, as it seemed to be for the first sight, because of the presence of the table, the chair and the script. It is something else, it is more personal, more intimate. The performer’s enthusiasm towards Kravchenko is well known, as the book was also published by the care of Maladype in November.
In the autobiography of I Chose Freedom, everything can be found, which Kravchenko experienced during the total soviet terror, it follows through and tells his road from starvation until the peak point of wealth, it shows detailed the structure of the system of informers, a paralyzed society, where everybody is afraid of statements. The material is interesting and exciting enough but a dramaturg would have been useful for its adaptation. The language of a book is totally different from the one of a performance. We get many names of towns, abbreviations, complicated sentences, which we are unable to remember or pronounce, while the actions are going on, and Zoltán Balázs dictates a very fast tempo for it all. He throws us into deep water, but himself too with us. In his artistic disposition it is always impressive: he does not just push the borders of his viewers, but his own ones too. Some can handle it and they are not swallowed by the flow of text – some are less receptive, if they find themselves at once in the deep water.
The tempo is frightening only for the first time. The text is very dense and concentrated, but the artistic playfulness can balance the scale. Zoli Balázs is Zoltán Balázs and Victor Kravchenko at the same time. In the totally narrowed place of theatre we can sit very close to him, he sits all through the performance, and he makes huge gestures, speaks fast, asks questions from us, he is in continuous contact with the viewers. He stops the text many times, and asks if it is understandable, can we follow it, or he should sum it up shortly, if our heads are totally full of with the great amount of information. We can learn to swim together with him with slow, but confident movements, even if we cannot remember the names of all the towns, but the similarly complicated names of characters we can anyway, and our mind slowly get used to it. He never gets out of his character, he is presented here as Kravchenko, behind whom for some moments Zoli Balázs winks out. Anyway, this kind of duality is rare in the Hungarian theatres, when actors identifies with their characters, they perform so much. Here he can hardly perform, the place is so small, as a close-up of a camera: it denies anything which is false. All over performed gestures or mimes. Zoltán Balázs is brilliant because of it, because he can do it all without any kinds of affectation, “he does not do it as an actor”. He reacts spontaneously to the outside world, there is not any planed, found out concept in advance. He is there simply, with his own natural nature, exists, while he shows us Kravchenko’s experiences, goes through the heaven and hell. He is a patriotic teenager, and then an enthusiastic and successful member of the party, who builds the system, because of it his personal life becomes impossible. We can see the different social levels of the Soviet Union, a system, in which Stalin himself is afraid, the horrible things of the war, the interrogations, questionings, show trials. He is sent to be a spy in the United States, but then he chose freedom instead. His belief in the country, nation is shaken at all, and he leaves his homeland.
In spite of it, the first part is not lethargic and sad, there are some love stories in it too. The second part is shorter, but it has a tragic atmosphere. Zoltán Balázs says goodbye to his homeland with choking voice and welled up eyes. His closing lines he repeats together with the viewers: “Without a free democratic Russia, there can be no enduring peace on earth.”
A more effective ending could not have been found out anyway.
Cassiope, index.hu, 2015
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)