The Tempest performance by Maladype and Bárka Theatre is passionate and above it, it is emotional. It uses despised – „bombastic” – theatrical effects, which have been exiled into storage room to construct a grandiose prose opera. It does not ironize, does not use counterpoints: it gives wild-romantic melodrama, in which real dramatic heroes show flooding feelings with great-opera-like performance, in front of the painted sets, while Leoš Janacek’s later-romantic opera can be heard from the loudspeakers. Is it playful formalism, game of style, sarcasm? No, not at all! In Ostrovsky’s drama vision-like pictures, imagined language, unbearably tensed situations and extreme actions show the overwhelming, devastating tempest of soul. Zoltán Balázs creates the credibility of deepness that gives tragic elevation and perspective, so with one word he gives the credibility of university.

Ostrovsky’s enchanted heroin, Katerina is a real dramatic hero, whose tragedy comes from her personality. She necessarily rebels against her jealous mother-in-law, against Kabanova’s depressing terror. She falls in love with Boris, with the melancholically fallen young man, who had to come to that dusty little town from Moscow, whose life is crippled by his guardian – who handles his heritage -, by Dikov who has terrifying anger sometimes. Varvara, Kabanova’ clever daughter helps the hopeless lovers, to be able to meet by the River Volga, when Katerina’s well-intentioned but powerless husband travels to Moscow, to let himself live there. Pilgrims and hypocritical people can be found in the town by the River Volga in the Kabanovas’ house. The picture of a hypocritical and cruel, superstitious and liar world is formed there, the emblematic figure of it is the silly old woman, who has frozen the sensitive Katerina to death with her terrible predictions and made her confess her “sin” to her mother-in-law. The love was born during the ominous silence before the tempest, during the tempest Katerina knees down in front of Kabanova, finally during the stormy night she jumps into the deep from the rock. Boris is sent to Siberia by his uncle. Varvara escaped with Kudriash, with whom she has met secretly. Kuligin the eccentric inventor, the scorned humanist finds the dead body. Kabanov who remains alone for ever is crying for his unfaithful partner, then goes against his mother who he treats as the killer of his wife. In The Tempest we can find basic motives of romanticism (fatal love, demonic madness, tempest of soul and nature, flying and falling, a superstitious religiosity that ruins the soul and the opposition of God everywhere and in everything, the fight of the degenerated and empty tradition and freedom, which fulfils personality. From all its elements the real dramatic poetry is coming: expressive theatrical effects, captivating atmosphere, and high tension characterises it all the time. The performance creates a theatrical poetry which is respectable for it.

Judit Gombár’s widened set of play cites the wild-like world of great operas: in the background there are gigantic painted mountain peaks, in front of it there is an irregularly shaped ramp that runs upside (bridge, path, river side, rock), which is painted red, deep blue, dark purple by the picturesque lighting which serves the mood of each scenes. In the expressionist painting of space black dressed lighting technicians are pushing the camera cars on rails, there is a crane of camera too, there are spotlights on them. The points of lights follow the actors during the scenes, they change from one to another, they widen and get narrower: they guide the viewers’ attentions. The light becomes a kind of silent character, when the reflector goes contrary to the character who crosses in the deep at the stage lights, or when it is fixed on the scaffold to cite the sun. The continuous metamorphosis of area is magical. This space is the space of soul, as the tempest is the tempest of soul. The half circle can emphasise, border and connect – as a camera in a film.

They mix under the performance the overflowing music of Janacek’s opera, Katya Kabanova, which must paint the characters’ feelings, moods, angers. To use this solution on the stage is crucial. If actors live through and show up the inner happenings, an over-decorated tautology can be formed. If they cannot live it through, this undertone will be a faulty illustration. Anyway, it destroys the magic of presence. In the performance of Bárka-Maladype Theatre, in this wonderfully fabricated prose opera the musical showing of emotional waving is obvious.

The women seem to be the ancient pictures of each characters in Judit Gombár’s heavy, trailed, nicely stylised, emphasising costume-like dresses, with their bunned, braided hair buildings – they are portraits that have got into life, they are typical figures of the XIX. century mythology of Russia, who are painted with wide brushstrokes. Kátya Tompos’ really nice, fragile Slavic beauty can reflect Katerina’s nobility of soul. Olga Varjú – Kabanova – with the stuffed weasel in her arm, in her layered red dress, with her tight hair she is the wild eroticism closed into the queen-like strictness. The men’s costumes are suitable for a great (open air) stage: they are essential like the dresses of figures on cards. Dikov – Róbert Kardos – is the man with boots and gun, wild master. Kudriash – Ádám Tompa – is a freedom-loving Cossack boy. Kabanov – Balázs Dévai – in his long pastel Russian shirt is like a tall, eternal teenager. Boris – Zalán Makranczi – in his “Germanic” coat, silly little hat, he is like Buster Keaton with his wondering face who gets lost in the Russian steppe. What is the actors’ work, if the figures are so ready, if so many things are shown by their inner sound, the opera, if the lights can shade so punctually?

In confessional situations they put their hands on their heart. They mostly walk leaning forward, as they would balance with the headwind, or they would flow on tiptoed like ballet dancers. They open their arms and push their backs to the wall if they are frightened or they curl up in the corners holding their knees. Many times, they move at the end of a musical phrase, at the beginning of a sound they froze into a picture. Many opera-like poses, conventional gestures and forms of great stages. Meanwhile they are not funny, over-thought this performance which is composed till the smallest details. The actors concentrate well their passion into the formation of gestures. The century old theatrical tropes are ennobled into meanings. The elegantly plastic motions, movements show only a part of the inner happenings – we can feel how many ideas by actors remain hidden. Zoltán Balázs matches the “patent” solutions to concrete things to help expressions. Katerina and Boris must be torn from one another, they cannot leave each other. From the pathetic but arrogantly formed action the power of their love cries. Katerina balances on the edge of the upper floor, while she is talking about the freedom of flying. It is a heroic picture – a light dressed woman up in front of the dark sky -: it is similar to Tosca. Finally, the left young woman opens her hair, leaves her upper dress, before she jumps into the deep, or motionlessly stretches up to the upside climbing wall, between the sky and the earth.

It a real performance: the actors do not reproduce things – they become signs. The truth of heroic gestures come from deep analyzation, and relentless sophistication of formation. Zoltán Balázs and Judit Góczán dramaturg, solve the drama by Ostrovsky and do not match the idea to the drama. Kabanova and Dikov’s relationship tells us about the hypocrisy of the families’ powerful members and confesses about the depravity of tradition that ruins natural feelings. The drunken master who is pointing with his gun and the strict great woman jump on one another, the wild man hides himself under the royal train. The cruelty is a revenge for their dissatisfaction. Does Katerina have to die for these? The mixture of the old mad woman and the pilgrim figure is an excellent invention. It emphasises and makes a symbolic character the frightening figure. It tells about the maniac madness of rigid conventions, about the terrible sins behind the superstitious belief, and about the deformed eroticism which is hidden behind the fanaticism. Éva Bakos’s old woman, who is dishevelled-grey, in her dirty-lacy nightclothes is a frightening phenomenon. The wild obsessed one of moral issues and moderation is not characterised by great-opera-like ceremonialism. It is like she is rushing from a cruel theatrical performance into the world of ritualised passions. The “difference” of actors’ speech is a really intensive element of effect. Éva Bakos’ extremely powerful performance, the courage of her play one of the most lighting value of the performance. She cries her ominous cures by cracking her whip, the handle of the whip stretches between her legs like a phallus, its line winds onto her neck like a snake. During the dark afternoon of confession, she is the overwhelming tempest herself, and with her open legs she gives birth to the decline.

The performance is getting more and more silent. After that the strong form makes us accept the tragic passions, they play fewer and fewer music, the theatrical gestures become rare, the play becomes more and more lack of tools. Olga Varjú, as Kabanova shows evidently the power which is essential to the tension of drama. During the perfect decline something irritating can remain in her, while her greatness is captivating. Artúr Kálid as Kuligin does not bring the cliché of the eccentric freak one. The blaming that comes from his sentences and views shows us that morality that loves and understands humanity, and that makes him a real outstanding figure in this cruel town. The drama would give possibility to show us how coward and selfish Boris is, how wimpish and indefinite, narrow-minded Kabanov is. In this performance both of them are victims who would deserve better fate. Zalán Makranczi’s Boris is not a man, as he cannot decide on his own life. Balázs Dévai’s Kabanov is sad, a weak husband, who would be able to love Katerina if they do not always feel on themselves the mother’s piercing look. Balázs Dévai’s play has a beautiful arc, as from the indifference, through the cheating and drunken anger, he gets till the understanding that he has loved his wife and with her death he lost everything. Kátya Tompos is singing wonderfully a Russian folk song while she is saying goodbye to life. It is a shockingly wonderful theatrical moment. Everything is shown in it which dies with the final fall. Just a performance which is formed with so demanding thoughts, graceful culture of forms, punctual acting can be so purely and quietly without any tools, can be so sensitive.

Balázs Perényi, Színház, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Some can whistle, others cannot. In the performance of the Bárka Theatre (Maladype) who can (a woman) just touches her finger shortly and gives on the whistle to that person’s mouth, (a man character) who has just failed to do it.

The airy movement, the playful kiss to the hand can be seen symbolically too. The Tempest is about those who can give sharp, decorated and beautiful signs to the universe; and about those who can be powerful, noisy, rich but will disappear without any sign. There are free souls, and those who desire freedom on one side, and tyrants – who gut and ruin themselves too – are on the other side.

Zoltán Balázs’ mature performance shows the viewers first of all the mostly well-known – but typical for sure – drama of love-jealousy, Katerina’s suicidal tragic ending who tries to choose her lover (Boris) instead of her husband (Tihon), but the eternal tempest of any human life too which shakes us. “The” tempest. One of the greatest natural phenomenon and parallel to it one of the most saturated metaphors. The crest of great romanticism, the Sturm is shown by the performance that partly hides it too. It opens opera-like sets, uses many drama-musical undertones, lights with passionate lights – but it lets hear and see in their pure nature too, in their theatrical machinery, the building-fine-artistic, acoustic and visual effects. By Zoltán Balázs’ hand an art work was born, and the place of bringing to life is an art studio.

A studio of film making. It is really old-styled. On the rail, built in the set. reflectors are moving instead of cameras. The set technicians, who are dressed in black, and they are almost unnoticeable, handle the sources of light. Mostly that face is get into the frame of lighting on which we should focus our attention too. The light scenic of musical theatre is mixed with the dramaturgy of emphasised beam of lights of the outdoor theatres. From the crane, which is moved by a technician, a lamp of studio raises the circle of an orb to the painted sky. The five scenes (two parts) go on in a clearly defined period of time, but under the blueish glimmering it seems to be an eternal evening or night.

The not to super-modern technic which serves – follows and drives – the theatrical work is interesting and little bit funny too. The small camera cars make circles of an amusement park, as they come from the shadow, other time they go towards the gates of dark, invisible rooms. It’s a storm train in The Tempest. A train of cave. Of course these small cars with wheels do not run so fast as the ones in Városliget. There is a shaking irony under the pathos in the fact that from time to time parts of Leoš Janácek’s opera (Katya Kabanova), that was shown first in 1921, get the (singing) words from Alexander Ostrovsky’s play of 1960. The graceful music dubs the glowing drama.

Different kinds of effects are reflected on one another. Judit Gombár’s set could have been made by an early (from the end of the XIX. century) Csontváry’s drawing too. The viewers can see some expressively tensed, late romantically rampant maybe theatrical thing in the convex half bridge which is running up, in the vault under it, in the shocking purple-blue painted background. In its immovability the whole is moving. For some scenes it is not easy to get a more suitable platform or corner. Its vertical division and horizontal half circle help the simultaneous settings, the not easy chasing of different episodes, the connection of the elements of actions. The set does not imitate the real sites of the drama, but in its abstraction becomes concrete, set makes continuously the director and his actors stylize. Judit Gombár’s costumes that are not individual consciously do the same. On the men’s and women’s dresses we can see the same kind of military-like lines. The scissors have to cut only straight lines, and the needles march it. At least this is the pretence in this rigid, cool, rules follower world of orders. The colours come in the foreground with their meanings. A flash of light, a ruffle, a melody of wave on the women’s dresses can be seen as a rebellion against Marfa Ivanovna Kabanova’s (rich merchant woman, widow) despotic maternal authority. A red umbrella which is waved by a young boy can become a weapon against Savel Prokofievitch Dikov’s (merchant, considerable civil in the town) scrounger bossy behaviour.

The composition of the performance interprets as dramatic poetry the master piece of Russian dramatic works, which is before Chekov (it was written in Chekov’s birth year). However, Zoltán Balázs does not let fall the importance of real situations in the middle of the vibrant over poetic quality too. The formal language, which has formed in earlier interpretations, becomes tighter, there is not an actor friendly system of signs. It objectifies the actors, forces them to become tools, it melts them into the distinctive group of set, costume, light and sound more intensively than usual. Of course this road is usable, however sometimes we have the same feeling as when we are listening to our friend who is speaking a non-existent language: sometimes the direction makes only E-s to pronounce rigidly (ok well, sometimes É-s too). Maybe it cannot step over its own shadow, the artistic form, the undoubtedly actuality of solutions that are put in vitrines of a studio.

Fortunately, the Maladype (or more widely the Bárka Theatre) is mostly merged, community-minded studio so that the picture formed by the community comes over the details. Róbert Kardos cannot find a matching point with his role now, but the blankly thundering and staggering Dikov becomes more meaningful next to Olga Varjú’s empress like Kabanova who is cheated with patient evilness. (The sexual couple of the prudish old woman and the man with weak character is not prepaid or interpreted really.) Balázs Dévai (Tihon) and Zalán Makranczi’s (Boris) performance can be measured together: the earlier one’s sad-helpless character, childish whitening the later one’s homeless searching for love tell us how unworthy are both of them to Katerina’s subject of graceful, brave, honest storming. Kátya Tompos (we can think that she is determined by her name too) feels herself totally at home in the soul of the young wife. Her pretty physical reality dematerializes in case of the exam situations and tortures. She is ethereal like the tempest. When she sings a Russian folk song (in Russian language) before her abstract death, when she dies hanging on a vertical wall, she uncovers that unmeasurable distance by vocal sounds which separates her self-conscious, free desire for happiness, her self-acceptance from the others some kind of petty ways of life and not the clever manipulation of the text.

The actors’ performances – as we can see it – can be appreciated in character couples too. Olga Varjú, who is implacable and places her role perfectly and Kátya Tompos who is winner with her gentle purposefulness can die and live against each other. The couple of Marfa and Katya is the biggest artistic carrying power of the performance. Whether they want it or not Artúr Kálid’s sleepy-restless inventor, who makes experiments with perpetuum mobile and the young office worker by Ádám Tompa (Vania), who struggles with square movements, and always stamps from a duo too. Varvara (Tihon’s sister) and Glasha (servant in Kabanov’s house) becomes twins not only because of the actresses’ names (Kamilla Fátyol, Hermina Fátyol). Their outlook and function bring close the female characters (starts from pastel), the “helpers”. (It is not well understandable why Varvara works so hard against her brother and on behalf of her sister-in-law.) Éva Bakos shows sexual desire with a jumping rope, with the turning of the whip, her grey and old Feklusha as a pilgrim woman is a unique figure, she is the demon of vengeful prophecy and prejudice. Her choreographed mad rituals and speech are not equivalent. She can tell her fate better with her body, then wondering and losing herself in Dezső Mészöly and Pál Mészöly’s translation.

The original drama is much richer, and more captivating than The Tempest by Maladype. Anyway, Zoltán Balázs’ more abstract, poetic, artistically technical re-formation is valid, and beautiful interpretation of Ostrovsky’s ideas. It is a reason by someone’s rightness who lives her feelings authentically, with fighting and consistently – who finally dies because of her only life.

Tamás Tarján, Népszava, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Bright reflectors are lighting into the actors’ faces. The light follows them many times, gets into their eyes, even into their wrinkles, does not leave them alone, it emphasises and highlights their reactions. It enlarges the lies and the honesty too. Let us see their inside. The actors’ and their characters’ small gestures are shown to us. However basically they are playing realistically but they will have demonstrative effect. The light alienates us from them but brings us closer to them too. To some parts of the stage rails are put, the technicians who handle the reflectors are pushed on them to be able to give the light from the most appropriate point. The lighting technicians and those who move the cars are not just background workers now, but they are parts of the performance, their coming and leaving become the parts of sight, maybe it is less important from that one of them even eats a chewing gum.

It does not fit into that picturesque composition which Zoltán Balázs, the director has formed to the performance of The Tempest by Ostrovsky. In case of Balázs, lighting always has an emphasised role, during The Blacks, Empedocles and Theomachia he would have liked to celebrate a mass with its help. Meanwhile during these undoubtedly talented performances by him I felt some kind of contrivance, and that the actors are not independent creators for sure but they just carried out the director’s conception.

As in case of The Tempest the natural balance has been found, the determined idea is hardly touchable, and the characters are not dancing tied up. Kátya Tompos, for example is excellent as Katerina. She is a clean, clever woman who does not want to follow any social conventions which are forced on her, she stands against her mother-in-law tyranny, she can hardly handle her husband’s uncertainty that turns into over shy nature, she goes confidently towards suicide instead of goes on living like this. And how dramatic it is, and even – have to be said – how beautiful this suicide is. Katerina starts climbing down slowly from the top of the set which is designed by Judit Gombár and forms a half-broken bridge which is going upside. She does not jump or fall into the deep, just climbs down and meanwhile she is singing with tormenting pain from the opera, Katja Kabanova by Janácek. The motives of this opera can be heard other times too, and they form a harmonic unity with the prose.

The view, the acoustic effect and the play come together in a rare way. However, the play is not always elemental, its overall effect is powerful. Katerina shows her husband, Balázs Dévai, as this man is unable to get independent from the effect of his mother, he knows how unfair this strictly strong woman with his wife, but he does not dare to stand against her. Olga Varjú gives, with straight waist, strutting walking and with hypocritical audacity which sometimes turns into infamy, the mother who sticks to old moralities. Zalán Makranczi’s Boris is however in love with Katerina, cannot rebel against the conventions. Artúr Kálid’s inventor shows himself little bit narrow-minded, but many times he can see clearly. As the whole performance has enlightening power. The moving reflectors lighten a hypocritical society where lie and cruel hypocrisy are the rulers.

Gábor Bóta, Magyar Hírlap, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

During the performance of The Tempest by Ostrovsky a panorama set lays in the Bárka Theatre. It fills the long wall. The set has a set-like feeling, it is made of painted wings, the background shows a landscape, the terrain and the sky, to the front side of it they have connected a diagonally rising upside slope as a dominant walking area, under its upside part three “doors” have been cut in it for the moving underside. Judit Gombár has designed a stage, which had been made for operas once, but while in the huge palace of music we can watch the sight, which no matter how stylised it is, wants to reach (fake)realistic effect, from a discrete distance, here we are sitting in it, like in an art studio. It is exactly about it. It is about a set of an art studio. To make undoubtable the crying intentionality, the director, Zoltán Balázs brings in the camera cars, running on rails, which are used during film shooting, on them they have prepared not cameras but lighting machines this time, and not cameramen are travelling on them, but the lighting technicians. The scene-shifters are pushing them on back and forward during the scenes, then they follow the characters with the circles of lights of their lamps, or cross their way, depends on how the director wants it. Sometimes he makes the characters stand on the car, for example they push in Kabanova and pull out Kabanov on it; the first one’s make-up is decorated on it, while the second one goes to trade with silk on it. There is a crane too, which goes around and raise, the reflector on the crane projects a moon to the background horizon.

It is a pure pseudo shooting in any film studio.

And it is a pure opera. They seem to be shooting an opera film. From time to time we can hear the opera, Katya Kabanova which was written from The Tempest by Leoą Janáček, who is the Czech composer genius. Sometimes we can hear it parallel with the played scene. The Czech singers are singing in Czech language those things which are said in Hungarian language by the Hungarian actors. At the same time or almost at the same time. (Do not have to get afraid: there is not any playback “dubbing”.) The postponed dubbing is composed beautifully, musically, in a good tempo-rhythm. Some short prosaic sentences are usually said during the intervals of vocal parts, for example in the final of the first part, they use the momentary break of the vocal part to say “good night”. They do not have to speak during the “quartet”. To complete the musical representation of the dramatic situation it is enough if Varvara and Kudriash, the lovers who do not care about the prohibitions, try to separate the tragic lovers, Katerina and Tihon, who hug each other in the euphoria of their coming together.

Oh, I have hardly forgotten: the drama is about the fact that Katerina and Tihon fell in love with each other, but the young woman’s mother-in-law, the tyrant Kabanova, who keeps her own son under her power, finds out the affair, and as there is not any way out, Katerina will commit suicide.

Ostrovsky’s play is one of the emblematic masterpieces of drama literature. I say it only because may not be known by everybody. Meanwhile we are in Hungary. In the encyclopedic article of our theatre history, according to Andor Pünkösti and Aurél Kárpáti Ostrovsky could not write good dramas. It is undecided whether they thought it this way, or they would have liked to hit on the “right sided” Antal Németh when he put it on program in the National Theatre. Any version can be true, it is even worse for them. As I have said, we are in Hungary. If the drama is strong on its own, whether the showing of the artistic side of theatre serves any more besides the emphasising of the director’s artistic nature? When I ask it, I remember the fashionable clown of my childhood, who cried the narcissistic phrase before his big trick “Akrobat, óh!”. Is there only a cry or a trick too?

I think that The Tempest is a progress in Zoltán Balázs’ career. Instead of a pattern it is a dramatic composition. Instead of a style embroidery it is an experiment to grab human fates. The picturesque and artistic stylization is there to avoid conventions. There is not any place for naturalistic “drama playing”, the psychological playing is overwritten by the gesture language and the choreography, however according to the signs it does not become part of actors. Ádám Tompa, who plays Kudriash parallel to his verbal sayings he jumps and stamps: it is unknown who he is really, but without any questions he is a “figure”. Róbert Kardos is shouting as Dikov, and points his gun on everybody, it almost forms his character. Artúr Kálid is the handyman, as the odd Kuligin with his red umbrella (maybe because he is doing experiments with a lighting rod?) he is similar to a samurai in Mao-coat and an intellectual raisonneur. Once Balázs Dévai who is hanging upside down from his neck, as Kabanov he tells his resume this way: the goodbye from his wife which includes the sarcastic rebellion is even stronger from it, when he repeats it watching his mother and turns back her tyrannical instructions. Olga Varjú’s Kabanova who is peacocking with filled mink instead of a mink collar, can show like an icon and at the same time with inner shading the female great woman – she is not an iron-nosed witch, but a despot who enjoys her life, who does not apply her scruples on herself.

Tihon, Zalán Makranczi from the performance does not live through the love from inside, instead of it he is like a bon vivant, elegant, fine and a nice stranger, but we can have uncertain ideas about his feelings and his honesty. Mostly because suddenly he meets in a kiss with Katerina’s younger sister, with Varvara, played by Kamilla Fátyol. This moment is undue psychologically is not surprising because it does not have any understandable reasons, it comes mostly from the tactile relationship, that the characters get in connection not in a psychological way but with physical touches, they grab, hug and raise the other one, hide under each other’s dresses, for example once Tihon goes down the slope while he is holding Katerina who is standing on his shoes. The kiss is this kind of chance, the result of touch without any consequences. Éva Bakos brings these physical things to the top, who creates from Feklusha, the pilgrim woman an old goblin, a wizened medicine woman with dishevelled, grey hair, she is like an omniscient of love, who dances with a jump rope and whip the mystery of sexuality; she is an effective figure, it is a shame that with her speech she ruins the power of her presence. Katya Tompos uses the psychological tools – gently hidden – in the role of Katerina, simply and in an inspired way, without any melodramatic connotation, she dematerializes from inside. As in case of her final good bye – after the insensitive leaving of her lover – she watches in the distance, into the nothing, her left hand remains upside in the air, then she has already been on the other side, before following the director’s instructions, she climbs down on the cramp irons on the wall, after it she would die standing on her way. It is an important artistic achievement. Katya Tompos would have been known to be a great promise only by those who has not minded going to the Attila József Theatre, so it is a miracle that she has been found.

The performance has much virtue, it must be the result of artistic imagination. I have a sense of lack because of the fading of dramatic thought. It is a characteristic moment when Olga Varjú as Kabanova shouts at the moment of finding out the forbidden love: “That is where freedom can lead!” For this moment the audience should start laughing, the drama is about the killing of freedom, for which Kabanova can be the emblem -, but the audience remains silent, do not feel to be accepted. Dobrolyubov said that Katerina is sunlight in the empire of darkness. The later one is around us, just theatre does not want to recognise it. There are many artificial lights during the performance, there is flaming in it too, but the drama is a protest against the demolition of human’s natural rights – the most important thing in the drama – which die out on the altar elevated for beauty.

Tamás Koltai, Élet és Irodalom, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The greatest surprise is the news itself, Zoltán Balázs, who as the leader of the troupe Maladype, then in Bárka Theatre has had success with mythical, ceremony-like productions which mix opera, dance, prose and brought up later pouting from his funs, and now he puts on stage a regular realistic drama, The Tempest by Ostrovsky.

The rebellious woman’s drama is of course, the eternal symbol of individuality who fights with social restrictions too, Katya Kabanova’s story is deeply built into the Russian society of the XIX. century that tries to get out of the feudalism. The director tells the tragic story in spectacular, suggestive pictures, and lights sharply the humiliating vulnerability and the suicidal rebellion. The sharp lightening is there in its reality too: as we were on a film shooting, reflectors are moving on rails, as indiscreet cameras are watching the intimate moments of the middle-age-like world. Zoltán Balázs does not work as a brave formal rebellion, as the determined researcher of strange solutions on stage, but he elevates from ground the play that paints the reality, with the really punctual and calculated usage of fine tools. It can be taken by words too: Judit Gombár’s set is a half bridge that goes up, the symbol of broken, struck decisions and jumps. The scenes happen on and under it too, on its ending, vertical wall they can climb up and down on handrails. The lover Boris climbs up on it and Katya climbs down from it to die. During the scenes we can sometimes hear the appropriate part of the Moravian composer’s - Leos Janácek – opera, which was named by the title role. It is more than background music, it is a sensual and emotional interpretation many times, but it never wants to come before the text or the story.

Besides the vision of the director which is well formed, the interpretation is decided by the choice of the main character. Katya Tompos’ fragile appearance, her fine beauty and not at least vibrant play which can always show the always shaking soul inside makes clear all her actions, words are led by the aim of suicide. She rebels and cheats her far existing husband, and mainly that is why she admits her act to get rid of her unbearable life. According to Olga Varjú’s performance the old Kabanova with solid inner belief, strongly but hypocritically ceremonially believes that the keeping of the ancient forms means the saving of the ancient lifestyle too. Balázs Dévai excellently puts together her son’s, Tihon’s character who is indecisive and helpless: in all his gestures we can find the resistance of mind but he does not dare to rebel. He knows that his mother’s claims are meaningless but he does them, however just formally in an emphasised way, without any inner belief, to be able to escape to the pub soon from all of the conflicts. Zalán Makranczi shows the intellectual Boris, Katya’s lover, as someone who is pushed by the circumstances, who does not dare to rebel in a real way. Éva Bakos, in the role of the pilgrim woman shows the mad woman of the village from the middle age, the believer of superstitions, the ghost-like figure of her. Kamilla Fátyol, who is in the role of Katya’s sister-in-law and tempter, gives the practical user of the circumstances. Róbert Kardos as Dikov with confident stupidity, Artúr Kálid the inventor of the village with familiar silly rationality shadows the picture of society. Ádám Tompa characterises Kudriash with crying laugh, while Hermina Fátyol shows with closed attitude the Kabanovs’ servant.

The performance is double faced. It is really photogenic – mainly from above, from where the set rules wonderfully. From the lower lines of the auditorium we can see the drama better.

László Zappe, Népszabadság, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Seemingly, the critics have been surprised by the choice itself: after Zoltán Balázs has gained his name by his unique ritual theatre with Ghelderode, Genet and Ionesco, and now what does he want to do with Ostrovsky who is an outstanding person of the Russian realism of the XIX. century?

The unusualness of the choice of the play is mentioned by all analysing writing in connection with The Tempest performance of Bárka and Maladype Theatre. The writers definitely mention this performance as a progress during the career of the director – everybody from different point of view of course. Tamás Koltai refers to the adjectives of his earlier writings which were about Balázs’ earlier works, when he talks about The Tempest: There is a dramatic composition instead of the pattern. There is a human experiment to grab human fates instead of the embroidery of style. According to Judit Csáki many things – almost everything – are there which we need not only to understand, but to be able to feel the greatness of the play, its raised tragedy, and its actuality which has effects even today. The critics notice and mention consistently the change and as a result of it there are many writings about this performance, as in case of Empedocles but even in case of Acropolis only fewer, many times in combative mood written reflections were published only.

Go back to Ostrovsky’s play: in connection with the emblematic masterpiece of drama literature (Koltai) László Zappe highlights that the play gets deeply into the Russian society of the middle of the XIX. century which is trying to get out of feudalism. Balázs Perényi’s analytic comment has already brought us closer to the nature of the direction: In Ostrovsky’s drama the visionary pictures, the imagined language, extremely tensioned scenes and extreme actions show the devastating tempest of soul that brings everything with it. Zoltán Balázs is characteristically that kind of director, who from one side goes stubbornly on his own way, from the other side he is consciously building and widening it, and which is hardly negligible for him as the leader of the troupe: he is continuously widening the possibilities of Maladype too. Next to Perényi, Gábor Pap emphasises the stubborn wanting of continuity, when during the introduction of his writing he talks about the strange, outside, almost divine optics, which is given to the viewers.

Pap similarly to the other performances, in The Tempest he can realise this almost Brecht-like tool of alienation. The illusion of watching in the film studio forms a nice distance between the viewers and the performance. The performance with the realistic recalling of the practical surrounding of a film shooting (the lighting technicians who are moving on camera cars, the marvellous lighting effects which are born in front of us and the strange effects of light, the emphasised costume-like costumes and the stressed set-like sets) seems to show off with its artificial style. According to Koltai’s summarised idea: It is a pure pseudo shooting in any film studio.

From there opera is only one leap away, the final genre of combination of extreme stylisation and fake realism. That is why Katya Kabanova by the Check Janácek, who based it on The Tempest, does not sound as pure background music, which must paint the characters’ feelings, moods, emotions (Perényi). According to Gábor Pap the combination with references to films means much more than this, as the biggest cheat of film art, which represents the realistic reality the most, it is the music, the music which sounds in the background. And really it is similar to the watching of any costume films.

According to Balázs Perényi the women seem to be the ancient pictures of each roles in Judit Gombár’s costumes, the men’s dresses are essential, as the dresses of figures on the cards. Tamár Tarján points to the similar direction: the same military like lines can be seen on the men’s and women’s dresses. The scissors have to cut only straight lines, and the needles march it. The costumes make us feel and analyse the same kind of overregulated rigid and cold world which is built by Zotlán Balázs. The frenetic set with its simplicity, the bridge which goes to nowhere, with the painted hills behind it, and the long-laid podium and the rigid landscape together with it are rich symbols too, they are the symbols of the stuck great decisions and jumps. (Zappe). According to Tarján the set can be made based on an early (the middle of the XIX. century) drawing by Csontváry. From Balázs Perényi’s point of view the wonderfully created prose-opera takes place in an expressionist painting of space or on the landscape of soul.

For this we need opera-like characters too. Judit Csáki emphasises that now we do not miss the showing of fates, however all through the performance the form language of there can be found in the foreground. Olga Varjú’s performing, who is always exciting, all writings appreciate: it is solid, hard, hypocritically ceremonial (Zappe), peacockish, a female great woman (Koltai). Next to the tyrannical mother and mother-in-law we can see the colourful, sensual woman (Csáki), the empress dowager-like, Kabanova, who is cheated by patient wickedness (Tarján). According to the summery of Gábor Pap the great woman is closer to Arkadina than to Bernarda.

Kátya Tompos’ play, who performs Kabanova’s daughter-in-law, quotes the symbol of death, the swan (Pap), her performance is ethereal (Tarján), fragile, fine, shaking (Zappe). Her stylised abstract death; it is a heroic picture – a light dressed woman upstairs in front of the gloomy sky -: it is pure Tosca (Perényi). For Tarján, her Russian good-bye song illustrates, on the language of musical notes, that immeasurable distance that divides her self-conscious, free desire for happiness, her self-acceptance from the others’ petty way of life.

Zoltán Balázs and the troupe of Maladype tell us mainly this fight between the passion from the deepness of slavery and freedom and the bossy, negligible outside world with demanding thinking, sophisticated culture of forms and punctual performance (Perényi). The performance is a reason by the truth of a person, who lives, fights his feelings rightfully and consistently – of the person who dies because of his one and only life (Tarján). And if we recognise it, we have not been so surprised why did they choose The Tempest this time.

Tamás Jászay, Revizoronline, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Zoltán Balázs, director left basically the Hungarian traditions of performing when he put on stage The Tempest by Ostrovsky with the troupe of Maladype in the Bárka Theatre. From one side he stresses “the artificiality” of it, but from the other side he strengthens its ironic-grotesque and tragic parts.

It is artistic. It is artificial, man-made, formed, not natural, not created, it is constructed by us. At the beginning of The Tempest one character reminds us to the opposite of everything: the pictures of endless nature, that he “has been looking at it for thirty-five years”. Anyway, Judit Gombár’s set, all elements of it and Zoltán Balázs’ conception as a director can form the most artificial context in the Fencing Hall of the Bárka Theatre: a prolonged slope leads up to the top of the huge podium, under which there is an arcaded place, with expressively leaning columns, and there is a huge painted pastel landscape behind it with mountains. Into it a lamp, which can be moved on a long rack, lights the moon at the beginning, from which (and from the technicians who use them) there are more in the place, that way those who are under can move on real tracks of real carriages.

It is an artificial hall. It is an artificially formed world. It does not create an illusion, or if it does then we become the characters of this illusion too. We are the voyeurs of an imagined shooting, anyway we are the viewers of an opera performance, but the artificial side is there too, as the sound of music – unusually from Balázs – are given by speakers now, so that the music can wreathe around the forming drama in front of us. We can always hear as background music the parts of the opera, Katya Kabanova, which was made based on Ostrovsky’s work, as it connects to the play and gives its emotional charge and rhythm.

Have you ever thought about that the greatest cheat of film art, which can show reality the best, is the music itself, the music which is played in the background? Meanwhile all elements of the world of pictures are concrete, the music is the only tool that can raise you or pull you down into the objective reality. It works that way here too and creates the environment of a real costume film. (It is disturbing, but many times the slanting columns, the arc of the slide up, and sometimes the lights too show expressionist visions for us, and they refer to the approaching, overwhelming changing, to the real tempest: to the revolution.)

Then why are we in this place? Why do we have to get into – that way, unauthorized, in a spying way – wings of Hollywood to follow until the end this typical story of the XIX. century? Why do we need the mediation, the middle world of film and opera to get drawn the Ostrovsky-like fable about degradation of being?

Exactly for the reason why Balázs always gives a separate highlighted role for his viewer: always with different tools but the director always gives us a weird, outside, almost divine optic – it is similar to the table layer god-like waiter of Empedocles (Balázs Dévai), or the angel-like figure (Hermina Fátyol) who is hanging from above in The Blacks – I do not want to go on with it.

We face up with the same gesture in The Tempest too: the light masters with their whole presence with beams of their intelligent lamps on carriages put the actions into analytical lighting, almost Brecht-like quotation marks; The feeling of peeping in a film studio brings distance between us and the world of performance. Even more important from it that eyes of film can work in another way too, if the viewers are able to do an imagined movement to put their own eyes on the place of the close eyes of the camera, and able to see the picture of a future film in front of them at the same time – we can visualise really intimate premier plans and big totals which show over our realistic point of view, we can go closer or further from that point where we really watch the performance. This ghost like activity is offered for the viewers, the chosen stories or their sets, the solutions can change, anyway it seems to be the greatest characteristic of Balázs’ performances.

Ostrovsky creates the colourful veil of relationships to be able to tell vividly Katya’s story, the woman’s who escapes from an unhappy marriage to a secret relationship, then gets disappointed from it too and escapes to death. In the inner circle of the matrix of the roles there are the strict mother, her son (Katya’s husband) who depends on her, and cannot grow up, and the sibling of the husband (Katya’s ally), Varvara, opposite to her there is the lover Boris and his uncle, Dikov stands, with whom Kabanova has a secret relationship. The background characters have to show us the state of Russia which is going towards an explosion through the society of the town. While the pilgrim woman, Feklusha is the typical fanatic of the era, a woman Rasputin, Kuligin is the dreamer idealist, who megaphones of the technical and social progress.

Balázs strengthens the tragic-comedian and ironic – grotesque sounds of the play instead of the dark moody adaptation of a fate-tragedy like play as it has been treated so far. It can be seen the most in case of Kabanova, who is performed by Olga Varjú. The great woman with the actress’ performance is much closer to Arkadina in spite of her strictness than to Bernarda: the Kabanov garden is not a closed world on the level of sets and costumes, the terror of souls is much more cunning, as the keys are in the soul. The ermine fur in neck refers well to the fact that the constant training of her son and sister-in-law is not a rule of life but an evil perversion. Her relationship with Dikov is not moved by real desires, but the pure sexism; the actress is rigid like a statue when she dresses down to the love scene, and she does not leave the animal fur even at the moment. At the same time, it is ironically funny when she asks her son (in connection with her sister-in-law) in a fake naïve way: “If she is not afraid of you, how can she be from your mother?” Her lover, Dikov, who is made the same statue-like rigid version of himself by Róber Kardos, in an almost grotesque way, for a long time, with a weird smile stands in a pose at one of the arcades, then when he speaks in a stuttering way, he almost collapses as he is so drunken. Balázs Dévai speaks sensitively and chiselled in the role of the husband, his hesitant rebels are unsuccessful trials, they fall down like tepid waves. That scene is wonderful where the wife, who has already been afraid of the cheating, asks him not to travel: they finally come together in harmony, in a kiss, but the mother’s entrance ruins everything. Her son would step to her to say goodbye with a hug, but his mother forces him on knees, makes him a slave; he is made to kiss the edge of her skirt. Finally as the peak point of all evilness she forces without any intimacy, her son and daughter-in-law to kiss each other in public in an unhappy way. Dévai slows down endlessly the scene, but anyway he does everything. After the death of his wife he becomes really retarded, we can see him as a child: he is hanging from Kuligin’s shoulder as a heavy bag, and his figure articulates word by word his hopeless final message.

This kind of stylisation appears other places too, I have to tell it that this time Balázs does not make the actors do any exotic movements. The stylisation that remains in the performance indicates anyway the individual appearance of the characters, or the usage of the place require from the actors. It is important that no one can remain alone with their roles, the indiscretion of the eyes of films follow everybody, examine everybody from close, and judge them. The actors are moving between flashing lights, sometimes they turn directly towards the imagined camera or the source of light which watches their gestures. The most moving moment is when Kátya Tompos, who plays Katya’s role cannot remain alone even during the final moment. In contrary to the text she does not jump, but she slowly climbs down into the fatal river: she simply climbs down from the tallest point of the right side on metal hooks which are placed there, and she remains there attached to the side wall. In contrast to the others’ lively death as they are stuck into their characters she chooses the real one, meanwhile she is singing a wonderful Russian folk song on her mother tongue, as the only melody of the performance, and turns backward the film-like virtual reality.

In Renaissance iconography the swan is one of the important symbols of death. Kátya Tompos is a similar swan: her whole performance, her secret ballerina-like figure, her gaze away indicate that – as she lives through the situations of social connections in this non-worldly way, as she is lost in herself, in a meditated way, with her husband, with family (Kamilla Fátyol plastic formation to Varvara’ accomplice is a vivid loosening, but not a solution), and then leaves them with the help of the illusion of love, then to find her way to home in a song, on the invisible bank of rivers. It is strange as I can see her on the ladder, motionless, and I know that she is dead, anyway she is much more vivid than the others, the living real dead people, with their own meaningless recognitions; nothing has changed anyway, for the revolution they need a half century which is full of sufferings, they need another generation.

It can explain for me why do we miss the “title role”, why does not Balázs show us the – of course, basically symbolic – phenomenon (however we can see the lights of reflectors as long lights of lighting). To be more punctual: he shows it, but not the tempest, but the tense silence before it; with the role of Kuligin and Feklusha. The actors, who play these roles Artúr Kálid and Éva Bakos (Even Ádám Tompa, who in the role of Kudriash shows us a perfect ballet scene) present a much more dynamic, acting style of performance, than their partners who are stiffened in their static characters, motionless state of life, Artúr Kálid is the only one, who at least points out the fact: a person died. He will be the one, who gets Kátya Tompos down from the highness of the side wall, and lays the dead woman provocatively into the middle of the place. As he is carrying the couple, the vivid but childish Tihon and the dead Katya, he may feel that at least he gets the sin on himself, which he has not even done, and the fate from which he cannot get out: as an adult he realises his own situation. He show the Leonardo album at the beginning, the mentioning of the invention of the lighting rod is about the possibility of a more enlightened world in the pitch-darkness of mentality. Éva Bakos in the role of Feklusha is strange and wild, she forms a disturbing figure: she makes me remember not an old woman but a naughty child, as she is appearing from time to time from the hidden places of arcades: as she is running through the stage, as she is the frightening lighting herself, with which the lighting rod of clear sense could fight evidently. Her ominous sentences become real frightening because of these double meaning: in her ideas, on the opposite pole with Kuligin, the darkest tradition of the Russian past, the mysticism which is full of nihilism to confirm herself with Katya’s death: as I feel it, in the strongest performance of the actress a superstitious Puck mixes her invisible, but even more life-threatening lines. Zalán Makranczi, who plays Boris is rigid and rough unfortunately in a civil way, so he cannot give enough power to Boris. His feelings towards Katya seem to be clean, and his performance does not make clear when he has changed and escaped from the love. Hermina Fátyol as a servant is an empty bowl: her mistress always treats her as an object in a feudal way, she is a cloth doll when her mistress dresses down for love, she puts on her with malicious cruelty the regal clothes, the other times she rolls out of a cloth to make it possible for the Kabanovs to benefit from the clothes which have been made of her own “body” (understand that way: it is gained from her and her mates’ tormenting work).

Gábor Pap, Ellenfény, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

In The Tempest, which has been performed in Bárka Theatre there are many things – hardly everything – which we need to not only understand but feel the magnificence, the elevated tragedy of the drama which is actual even today. Zoltán Balázs puts Janácek’s opera, Katya Kabanova into Ostrovsky’s drama; Judit Gombár designed the set for this later one, which is similar to a ramp to a motorway which leads to nowhere. There are holes under it, which make the fast movement possible – the mysterious background curtain which indicates the infinite landscape and the colourful – effective lighting strengthen or counterpoint the waving passions of the performance. The staff who is moved on the rails serves the same play, whose aim is to indicate remarkably the work of reflectors – the formation of the so-called effects.

So, the passions are waving, furthermore by the fault lines of the drama – and the artistic beauty, the directorial imagination try to emphasise it. He shows us and emphasises that Katerina who lives in the tyrant mother-in-law’s monumental dictatorship, thanks to an electric shock like glance she falls in love with Tihon – of course, Kátya Tompos and Zalán Makranczi quote the classical situation of Romeo and Juliette, so that make even stronger the different continuation - ; this passion is more complex than a frantic love, as everything is in it, which has been denied from Katerina: the choice, the freedom, the self-expression, the self-failure. That is why it is not a problem that Tihon by Makranczi returns Kátya Tompos’ deep, more complex flare-up with surface, superficial tools.

From Zoltán Balázs’ direction we do not miss the representations of fate, at least in case of the main characters, but their theatrical formal language is always there in the foreground. Kabanova, who is really powerful – Olga Varjú plays beautifully not only the tyrant mother and mother -in-law, but the woman too who lives a colourful sensual life – her ceremonial dressing on the slowly moving camera car or Éva Bakos, who as Feklusha plays a prophet – clown with broken outlook and exalted soul, they are all so called exclamation marks in the director and actor’s form-language: “Here The Tempest storms!”

The well-formed pictures rhyme many times with the interpretation: Tihon is the runner, but his long, surprising kiss with Katerina’s sister-in-law, with Varvara reflects a sharp strand not only on the man’s character (it is the gesture language of the surface communication not of the disloyalty or cheating), but on the girl too, who has strong erotic experience with someone else. A passionate kiss: it can be nothing and everything. For Katerina it is everything. Kátya Tompos’ suicide is a beautiful stylization, it is heart-breaking anyway: she is sitting in a ball-shape in the middle of the stage.

The side characters bring one-one feature; maybe Artúr Kálid is an exception, who associates a mythical and silly Kuligin with his composed outlook. Balázs Dévai’s Kabanov works not with his weakness but with his reflected acceptance; he tolerates his mother’s tyranny, anyway he knows many things, and he votes to the peace of soul which alcohol can give to him.

The other performance of The Tempest was directed by Viktor Rizsakov with the troupe of the new members from Debrecen and Beregszász – from almost nothing he created an endless wealth. There is not any set – in front of the stage, which is surrounded by white walls, there is low water, there are some doors on the walls and a real door has been made there from another set (with the writing on it: “this is the life of Gypsies”). There is stylization too, the director and the actors’ inner fight for freedom is in connection with the not even smaller bet of theatre making. A wondering troupe arrives with their worn luggage – the luggage will give later possibility for different kind of acrobatic and artistic tricks -, they play the drama and their own fate at the same time. Some costumes have separate “dialogue” with their stressed worn civil clothes, they come in and out between their actor and role life, they speak out, they comment on, they play. They put tragedy into commedia dell'arte, sometimes they help themselves and each other over hard times with farce like drives. There are some “objective” ones between them: the performance of the group is uneven. So many of them are involved in the tragic ending of the youngster’s love; they stress that the young – and really immature – Katya (Eszter Anna Szabó) needs help for her own death too: Boris, her love whispers her what to tell. There are many divine moments, perfect solutions, deep scenes – Tihon is an overgrown child there, who as his mother’s little child accepts to wash him, dry him, cut his nails. Nelli Szűcs’ Kabanova grows above everybody, it is all right: an everyday tyrant, she can rule and destroy with one glance, she does not need the divas’ attributes, not even an emphasized moment, not a composed situation, as herself is enough for monumentality. Zsolt Trill plays Kuligin the dreamer – inventor, he is a great clown. Rizsakov leads the players with ordered extravagance towards the shocking final – and of course, it is thought well too – they are standing in front of us, we are looking at each other, and a stray toy bear is given from hand to hand.

(Zsámbék, 31st Augustus, Bárka, 9th September)

Judit Csáki, Magyar Narancs, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Maybe The Tempest is one of Ostrovsky’s most sophisticated and detailed work. The opera, Katya Kabanova, which is Leoš Janáček’s, less well-known work in Hungary (It has not been played for decades) but otherwise it is his best one. That Zoltán Balázs hardly put the two works together in Bárka Theatre is more than a coincidence.

Moreover. The Tempest seems to be a prosaic print to the opera, as the director composes some scenes especially to the musical version. The musical work is much darker, it has ghostly atmosphere, so the coproduction of Maladype and Bárka Theatre tries to reach it too: the actions, which are lightened in an unusual way by head machines which are moving in front of the viewers on rails, happen in front of gloomy, painted storm clouds, on a cliff – in which there are regular slits, similar to tombs of cliff, are hidden. In the centre of Janáček’s opera we cannot find the traditional cliché of love triangle, but the relationship which is between the husband’s mother and the husband or the wife. Zoltán Balázs’ direction emphasises it: for Marfa Ignatievna’s confused identity Feklusha, the pilgrim woman, who is treated clearly mad, keeps a mirror. The drama forms a clean and punctual picture, where with the leading role Kátya Tompos debuts in Bárka Theatre. Here we can see for the first time Zalán Makranczi too, who has been tempted lately from Kecskemét.

Orsi Kónya, szinhaz.hu, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)