Four men and four women (Éva Bakos, Hermina Fátyol, Kamilla Fátyol, Katalin Simkó, Zoltán Lendváczky, Ákos Orosz, Zsolt Páll and Ádám Tompa): they are in night dresses, according to the modern fashion (but without shoes). Anyway, all these seem to be from other time, or at least not here; but somewhere in the timeless, outside the places, which exist according to physical rules. As beyond senses; on the ground of instincts. Where the theatre begins, when it starts in reality. The eight actors seem to have only that one and half hour to live through their life.

“Once, once / we were children” Sándor Weöres wrote it, who is the title giver of the performance (this is the title of a poem, with one line: Eggshell) in another of his poems, which is on stage by accident. This once is the time of the performance: we can see it from the bare foot, but from the soon beginning, from the special game of chair taking too. The game is made according to inner rules, filled with tension, all through it – with some kind of sexuality: not certainly with eroticism, but with interesting meeting, running around, shy interest.

The eggs soon appear – of course, this is a reference for the title too, but it can be interpreted so many ways as we can use them too. It is the question of origin, the symbol of fertility, the embodiment of easiness, fragile and momentary nature (these are similar characteristics together with the beautiful flamingos of the set director, of György Katus), which put some risks into the game too: put responsibility into the performers’ hands. Of course, not a big one: just as big as they need to learn maturity. Who drops one, “loses a circle”, goes for the basket and the shovel, and while the others are going on with their frivolous dance, he is just cleaning. In one performance, he has raised his partner’s interest so much, that she helps him to clean up (what a small sign it is of the flourishing love!) – the other one has not yet.

This performance, as many times during the director’s, Zoltán Balázs’ career, changes from evening to evening. Just some basic rules are fixed (for example, if a girl steps up onto the top of a chair, then they have to put the other chairs under her leg), the others come from themselves, even the order of the music can express Bánk Sáry’s actual mood too. The director tries to take care of the dramaturgy: the last music is always – what else – the Bolero, and the time is given too, which they can spend in one costume. Despite of that, the quality of the performance is not fixed: some days are totally different from the others. If everything goes bad – for example the music is boring – all can be lost. From one performance, which I have watched, one actress was away, because of an illness (Éva Bakos): her missing of course, broke the balance, broke the symmetry between the actors’ ages too – she sent her lack onto the stage, instead of herself. Now the theatrical experiment is not just the boys and the girls’ work: the viewers, even if is not important for them where Zoltán Balázs is during his improvement as a director, can feel on their own skins the eventuality of the experiment. Because if during an evening the movements cannot come well, and it ruins the actors’ stressed presence on stage (which is the main character, object and action of the performance here), then there is not plot, which can keep all of it. But if the stars stand well together, very beautiful things can be born.

For example, that the performers can learn one another, they chose a partner for themselves with different acts (for longer or shorter terms): they kiss from mouth to mouth the egg or blow the smoke of the cigarette, which is equal with the egg in the performance, or help the others change their clothes. (As there would be some of them, who have already eaten from the sinful apple, and there are those, who have not: there are some, who just show their body and get down their dresses, then later put on another, but there are some, who try to hide themselves shyly.) Besides the collective experiences (when like monkeys, everybody starts to imitate those, who have pushed themselves to the wall, or when somebody climbs up, and then experiences the intoxicating power of community and falls into the others’ arms) the doubled existences appear too: some wild dances, some sex-like actions, some really absurd games, like the testing of their pain threshold by cigarettes. Of course the pair fights of the “male characters” appear too, but do not leave the lightness and strong aesthetic nature of the previous things – and then merge all these fast in some kind of silly and lazy game. The best thing is, that all of it works not only in writing: the actors can experience all elements of movement theatre, that it can effect with all its elemental power towards the viewers too.

Maladype dances on the edge of the knife with the Egg(s)Hell – they are walking on the hells of eggs in reality. There are not neither implicit nor said rules that if it can happen, or if it is acceptable, that there is such huge difference between two performances: but the probe of pudding is its consuming, it cannot be taken from the viewers. Who – like me – could watch a performance, in which real things were born on the stage – the real game with capital letters, for example – must be permissive. The others – well they can talk about it with Zoltán Balázs.

Bálint Kovács, AmaroDrom, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)