The theatres are ready to reform to the right measure any drama of international literature. The graduated director-like men and bungler self-realizing gibberish tellers, ancient conservative fake-reformers, and re-interpreters, who are satisfied with stone-like traditions, official theatres, who are supported by governments and local governments and fringe troupes, which are supported by charities take the drama texts with forks as Csáky’s straws. They adapt freely. They turn the story upside down. They cut into theatrical clips the linear story. They push the story into century they like. They put jeans on rococo and ancient times. For the directors with sluggish head it is enough if they modernise with a mobile phone. They are changing the genders. They put together roles, which are against each other. They add contemporary songs, poems or opera arias to the story and face it with annoying overused hits. They mix up the order of scenes. They strengthen everything, which they have understood from the text and cut those lines, which they have not. They use freely classical texts if they are not protected by law.

Chekhov died 102 years ago. He loosened the narrative on stage, G.B. Shaw used his characters on stage as social megaphones. At Chekhov’ time the directors grabbed the theatrical autonomy. The dramas of the 20th century, were always in war against staging. However, the profession of drama writing still seemed to be working. From Reinhardt’s time the theatrical performances have become independent, Gordon Craig, who mostly remained directors of papers but he reformed the theatre in theory. The last great drama writer Bertolt Brecht re- wrote the ancient tales. He fulfilled theatrical reforms. He died fifty years ago. The authors of anti-theatre - Beckett, Ionesco, Genet – are the poets of dissolution.

Jerzy Grotowski, who graduated in GITISZ in Moscow, improved the theatre of neurology from Stanislavski’s psychological theatre, which can lead to ecstasy. Bob Wilson, the American speech therapist and sculptor, brought to success the pathological non-verbal theatre. Peter Brook, who could be proud not only of his performances from Shakespeare, but he could get the modern lesson from Seneca too, and even: in Paris, he put on stage Billetdoux boulevard drama, the Csin-csin which is camouflaged to be avant-garde, suddenly he left RSC, the traditional (“dead”) theatres. He left behind the drama literature of the world, from the money of UNESCO he formed an experimental workshop in Paris.

“Who is there?”

Peter Brook put on stage Hamlet first in 1955, with Paul Scofield’s Hamlet, with Alec Clunes and Mary Ure (Mrs Osborne) in the main roles. Then in Paris in the Bouffes du Nord, he cut the tragedy into two and a half hours, with the title: Qui Est La (1996). The story of the compressed drama went on until Ophelia’s death. The title was the same as the first line of the tragedy. Bernardo, who guards on the tower asks: Who is there? We usually do not understand the question. Those members of the troupe, who are not paid well, usually say the opening lines with deep voices. They validate themselves instead of the text.

In case of Brook, the African Bakary Sangare played the Danish prince in white tunic, Giovanna Mezzogiorno was Ophelia, Bruce Myers performed Polonius, Claudius was the Japanese Sotigui Kouyati, Sotigue Kouyate performed the ghost, Horatio was performed by David Bennent (He was the perfect Caliban of The Tempest), Gertrud was performed by his sister, Anne Bennent, who left the Academia Theatre of Vienna for the short cut role, she left Yvonne, the princess of Burgundy from Gombrowicz, directed by Ascher (Eszter Csákányi got her role). Three unstable chairs, an Iranian musician (Mahmoud Tabrizi-Zadeh) and only seven actors performed the shortened tragedy. None of them were French between them. According to the critic of Le Monde, the text of the performance had no meaning. He called the director a “saint cow”. In 2000, Brook, in Offenbach’s previous theatre, he formed The Tragedy of Hamlet into a travesty with one hour and forty minutes long performing time, and he combined roles too: Claudius and the Ghost, Polonius and the First gravedigger, Rosencrantz – Actor King, Guildenstern – Actor Queen – Laertes; with Shantala Shivalingappa as Ophelia, with his wife, the less interesting, Natasha Parry as Gertrud, and the thirty years old black British, Adrian Lester in the title role; he performed previously Rosalinda in the performance of As You Like It, which was performed by just men, the Cheek By Jowl, directed by Sam Mendes.

In Ljubimov’s Hamlet the curtain became a political main-character. Brook left the tragedy in half. The Belgradian Atelje 212 denimized it. Feró Nagy lumpenized it. Bob Wilson changed it to be a one-man-show: with wonderful lighting effects, in a perpendicular place of stage he performed the monologues alone. In the National Theatre of Cairo, in its studio on the IV. floor (1999) Hamlet was Asraf Abdel Rauf, Ophelia was Hala Tawakul, Claudius was Esszam Szubhi, Gertrud was Nadja Mahmud. These four actors, and Szajed Szulejman, the director, the five of them worked together there. They were more than the viewers. In Vilnius, Meno Fortas’ first performance was the Hamlet. We could watch Nekrosius’ performance in the Víg Theatre, as a guest performance (2000). In Merlin, eight English actors, with doubled merged roles, performed a funny Hamlet (2005).

Cockroach-Hamlet

Feró Nagy wrote a Rock-Hamlet from Shakespeare to Kecskemét. The theatre broke up. Feró Nagy worked on his performance. The rock-opera was put on CD. The Rock Theatre performed in Gropius Studio on the Stage of University (1987). Folk song adaptations were arguing with tango in it. Opera parodies, which imitated Mozart, with forms of music of dance. It was hysterical, overworked, excitedly passionate. Its musical peak points were not the same with the peak points of the drama. Feró Nagy did not perform an amateur Hamlet. The ungracefulness of his movements proved the social truth of the character. He told the text without bad dramatic feelings, with fascinating incidental nature, he almost threw it, but he gave inner, mental weight to the diction. Feró Nagy’s Hamlet was a very bitter prince, He was restless. He was moving all the time. He calmed down only when he realised his task, as he was running forcedly without any aims. His irritability was resentment. His ability to attack was protection. His bitingness was terrified vulnerability. In the performance, which is enlightened by lights of a disco, there was one more, heavy, appreciable performance: László Waszlavik, The bad man, in the doubled role of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father and the Actor King, he mocked nicely, in a parodist way the fake-dramatic gargling by the professional tragic buffalos.

What Feró Nagy did, was far from that, how Gábor Bódy (and Szikora) treated Shakespeare in Győr (1984), or that Ljubimov did with it in Taganka. Vysotsky the prince from Moscow, was similarly a pop singer, with irritating loud songs, overused, stretched out, black jumper. These were torn Hamlets. Is Hamlet’s black jumper important? It is really important. It is called as interpretation. If the Danish heir to the throne is not wandering with a gold chain around his neck, in night-black, romantic top, but he is the tramp of our modern cities: it is a decisive interpretation.

Hamlet of today

We can watch three Hamlets at the same time in Pest. In Madách, in Tivoli and in Bárka Theatre.

Ottó Viczián appears as prince Imre. He is a catholic saint, however, he came from the protestant Wittenberg together with Luther’s lessons. In a shirt, with ski hat, he is the civil educated Lajos Bertók, and there is not any differences between Zoltán Balázs’ Hamlet’s costumes and the viewers’ dresses, who are watching Hamlet.

The three Hamlets, which were performed almost at the same time in three theatres, there is one thing in common, than they cannot give out all roles of tragedy in any of these troupes. There are not enough, good, experienced in speech, suitable actors, who can understand the poems in a modern way. There are not actors.

Kerényi’s Hamlet is a political pamphlet. It is the director’s diary about his social mood. His hero is a thin, blonde boy, who is closed between the stonewalls, against the derelict world. Hamlet is stuck between two opposite walls of the castle in the Studio of Madách theatre. The viewers can sit on the two sides of the long run away- (Viktor Orbán is in front of me.) On my left (On Orbán’s right) there is a clock without hands on the tower of the royal castle. The soundings of the bells sign the time, which is out of joint. The characters count loudly the passing time. They tell what time it is. From Kerényi’s castrate-likely sharp and rasp-like smooth public work, his performance in theatre is very different. His Hamlet is getting thicken around pamphlet like thoughts, but he is hidden by artistic tools. He is understandable but is not similar to a pamphlet anyway.

The legal king’s follower hides his eyes with his right hand from the dirty world. He comes back as the Actor King too. He keeps his hand in front of his eyes similarly to the ghost. The connection of the roles of the King and the Actor King is an interesting (it is not a forced one) idea by the director: it expresses that where betrayal is, then it is a social gesture that pervades everything. As well as in the royal court and in the theatrical troupe.

Where is betrayal, there is betrayal!

Hamlet as a monologue

Hamlet by János Sándor is the result of Lajos Bertók’s talent, then the expression of it: it will never be better. It is a benefit performance. It is a will by a director.

Bertók’s Hamlet in the racket base in Zsámbék (2004) on the wide screen, he is enlarged and restless, and after it, he gives only close pictures about the royal Danish one. Hamlet in Nagymező Street is clear. He is simple in his movements. He is richer in thinking in open area. He makes a dialogue from his monologue. He does not simply start the top hits like, well-known poem, but he goes on with the solution of his dramatic exercise. He wants to finish the learning of the reasons, which move everything. He is thinking in public. He shares his problems with the viewers. He does not pretend that he does not stand on the stage, and the paying viewers just watch him secretly from the darkness of the auditorium. It is far from Bertók to flirt with his viewers. He does not tell his monologues to the viewers but he shares his ideas with them. Maybe they can help each other.

Hamlet as a common game

Tim Carroll’s Hamlet in Bárka Theatre is pure theatre. However, the English director made a performance, which is scrupulously loyal to letters: the theatrical paradise, which seems to be unreachable, appeared there, which he really desired: he frees the actors and viewers from routine, and actives them: so the actors and viewers are involved in the same way in the performance of the evening. Hamlet is a childish performance. Only in case of the final of the children-performances can happen the viewers’ liberation, when they throw from the stage colourful balls to the auditorium, and the child viewers from time to time throw them back. Carroll’s Hamlet is once in a lifetime thing and it is full of unpredictable surprises, it is an unrepeatable ceremony. Because of its nature, there are better and less successful performances.

The precondition of its creation is the ideological land of no one. It was not born under any political flags. Its appearance on stage cannot be connected to any mental flow. Only pure theatrical effects can be between its bricks. The actors and viewers take part in it with the same heart rate. They are watching each-others’ heart beating. The actors and the viewers. The viewers are playing together with the demonstrators. They have effect on one another. They influence, change the nature of the performance.

Hamlet in Bárka Theatre is not an alternative theatre. We can know: there is nothing like this. If there is, the alternative can only mean: it is whether theatre or not. Hamlet in Bárka is pure theatre. Its bricks are the tempo-rhythm, the common interest: being together once, the breathing together. It is not the umpteenth performance of Hamlet, the Danish prince’s tragedy on stage. It is not a depressing repetition of the classical tragedy. It is not an international masterpiece celebrated on stage. It is disrespect, which is loyal to letters, it is a childishly playful composition.

Its frivolity is saint seriousness. Its playfulness has connection with the hidden deepness of soul. An unknown story happens together with the viewers’ active participation and it is full of unpredictable suddenness things.

They do not perform the restoration of a five hundred years old drama. The happenings of today is born in front of us. The actors and viewers write together Hamlet that evening. The narrative literature ends. We are not interested in what is happening, but in how it is happening. We get to the basic elements of tension of stage: to the interesting nature of the speech between us, it is independent from those things which the actors tell to one another (When Hamlet tells: Swear on my sword! and holds an apple in his hand, he bites passionately into it, and Horatio, Bernardo and Marcellus bite into the saint fruit, which is necessary for the swearing. This fruit follows the whole performance, they sometimes put it on a head, like Vilmos Tell did it on his son’s head, and our attention is organised differently that way, than we would follow Shakespeare’s tale).

We do not take care of what is happening. We are watching as the actors (and the viewers) take care of one another. We are watching attention. The rare ceremony, that we are interestedly together with people, with whom we are interested in one another. We are not interested in the turns of the tale, we are interested in the fulfilment of unexpected new things. In the new tricks. With how fast reaction can the actors answer to surprising situations. How colourful is our imagination. Do we have superciliously the topic, how many convincing version can they improvise for us. Then when they step over the invulnerable border between actors and viewers, how easily they can bring us into the performance. We gloat over the chosen viewers’ temporary embarrassment, and we are happy when the viewers let themselves become performers too.

The performance is not held together by the turns of the tale, but by the rhythm, the inner melody of it.

Apple

Hamlet asks his followers to swear not to talk about his father’s ghost. Swear on my sword – Hamlet said, Zoltán Balázs grabs an apple instead of a sword to make them swear on it. He tastes it, keeps it to his partners, and they one by one bites a blood contract from the fruit. It is ironic and pathetic at the same time. Is Hamlet with sword or tailcoat? – it makes theatres interested from Sir Barry Jackson contemporary like performance in Birmingham, 80 years ago. An actor can have contemporary thinking with a sword in his hand too and bad in an old-fashioned way in a jumper too. The apple (as a sword), which gets into his hand by accident, it can ease the comfortable clarity in theatre. It can move the viewers’ imagination. It stimulates multidirectional association. Originally the I/5. scene has a comical rushing, hysterical moving, insisting, childishly rude basic colour. The directors usually leaves the dark humour of the scene on behalf of the “unity of style”. The apple is a suitable comic tool. It can live on its life thanks for the actors’ enlisted imaginations. Horatio puts on his head, the half-eaten apple, Hamlet targets him, like the circus-like clown-joke, which is the parody of the Gessler-scene of Vilmos Tell. Much later, maybe during the duel scene the apple appears unexpectedly in Horatio’s hand: it is not pushy, just makes them remember the kept promise, so that the ghost’s order will be fulfilled now.

The rebellious Danish

In the National Theatre at the head of the group of many members, Laertes rushed in the throne hall in 1954. He stepped to the head of the unsatisfied Danish people to put the domestic political crisis back to its joint.

Is Denmark a prison? Then it is for everybody!

To start a revolution in Elsinore: it is a suspiciously historical materialistic interpretation. In the performance – loyal to the text – there are times of war: the Norwegian Fortinbras’ troops marched through Denmark against Poland.

In Hamlet in Madách Theatre, there is army noise outside, and the lonely, angry Laertes ran to the royal couple because of his family affairs.

In Bárka Theatre, there is musical noise. Laertes rushed in. Suddenly we, the viewers become the angry Danish people in the light auditorium, who are unsatisfied with the situation in Elsinore. The public, who has been made active, dethrone the compulsory reading. They pushed from the throne of the saints the tragedy of all tragedies. The playful objectivity encourages us to rebellious independence.

And the others?

Horatio is Hamlet’s emotionless searcher. He is an excellent observer. Fortinbras, the new power, misses the end of the performance. The others: (are not) silence. Horatio goes around on the stage, he counts loud the number of dead people or the chimes. How much time has left until the change?

Kerényi’s Hamlet in Madách Theatre introduces the opening of the new era. Tim Carroll’s performance is a common ceremony of people. János Sándor brings the heir’s tragedy until a bitter confession. For a long time, the directors have projected (Benno Besson, Ascher Tamás, Zsámbéki) that nobody better can come after the pretender Claudius, but they have not told either that after the thinking Hamlet’s death the world will become hopeless. At the end of Hamlet in Tivoli, there is not any salvation. It told resignedly: there will be ever worse successors.

Kerényi is a Hungarian director. Tim Carroll is English. Kerényi put on stage a traditional Hamlet, Carroll a rule-breaker one. Anyway, there are common characteristics of their performances. At the important point of the performance: at the end of them. Both of them give the ending words to Horatio. In Madách, István Kelemen counts the time, Róbert Kardos in Bárka, stands as a historical witness. Hamlet dies standing in both Madách and Bárka too. In Madách, the others, who were stabbed, poisoned, just lean to the wall. They do not lie everywhere on the ground. They remain on standby. They are alive on standby. When we need them, they will wake up and step in action. The applause is the part of the performance. The killed dead people lean to the wall. Then they bow smilingly, happily: Rosencrantz-Guildenstern with a little clown joke, the ghost of Hamlet’s father makes us playfully remember his face, covered with his hand. The actress, who performs Gertrude thanks for the claps with a batiste handkerchief, kept in her right hand like Pavarotti, with a huge prima donna-like assoluta-curtsy, then raise gracefully the white handkerchief into her lap of her velvet dress. The actors run out freshly, then happily back: There will be another resurrection!

The dead people of Bárka do not pollute with their laying bodies the stage. Hamlet freezes by the wall as someone, who is counted out in a child game. He is a toy dead one. It is a theatrical trial deposit from the real death.

In Madách, those who have fallen lean in line on the wall. Zoltán Balázs in Bárka stands on his foot between the participated viewers, he is similar to someone, who can go on with his fighting anytime against the power. He forms an ending between two directors, who are totally different from each other, from the point of worldview, theatre acceptance and nationality. He states something involuntarily, which is in the air: maybe... than.

Studio of Madách Theatre - Shakespeare: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. (Premiere: 29. October 2005.) Director: Imre Kerényi.

Bárka Theatre - Shakespeare: Hamlet – Theatrical experiment. (Premiere: 16. December 2005.) Director: Tim Carroll.

Chamber Theatre Budapest, Tivoli - Shakespeare: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. (Premiere: 21. January 2006.) Director: János Sándor.

Péter Gál Molnár, Mozgó Világ, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)