The winger seats of the lines have been covered by careful hands, as from there we cannot see well the happenings. On behalf of their hearing nobody raised their voices, so the other stalls remained free. The first half hour of the performance was filled with hopeless struggle. Finally, we had a feeling, that this performance does even want to come down from above. It has remained up there, it nurses sullenly its found ideas, and for long, with a little bit of speaking disorder, mutters for itself. However, we can guess, that Zoltán Balázs really have something to do with Faust’s figure, in connection with Goethe’s work. We owe that much to the director’s talent to tell, that this performance is not only half ready, but it does not exist on its own. As he did not recognise, what he should have realised during the first rehearsals: different kinds of energy can be found in the actors, who get on stage, then those, which would be able to perform this kind of performance. It is true that there is something charming in it, when the representatives of two and three different generations, who grew up in very difference schools, with very different momentary powers, can break their soul to the exercise. It is about honest determination in cases of all of them. But it is not enough to leave this performance, which comes together with important lessons, touched.

The red program advertises Faust by Goethe, as a fantasy play in two acts. It covers reality that way, that fantasy begins for sure in connection with the very bare main topic, then wonderful visual ideas are performed in very different ways and with very different measure, but almost the fourth of the script of the more than three hours long performance do not come from the advertised play. The brought in texts are wonderful quotes, the problem is that neither the authors nor the translators are important. Nor the name of Zoltán Jékely and László Kálnoky, who are the main translators, are mentioned. How can we expect from the youngsters, from the university and secondary grammar school students to pay attention to the translators, or at least to accept them, if theatres handle this topic here in Hungary with such a puffy arrogance? These poets are not important. They are dead.

The performance defines itself as a performance for youngsters and adults. It is a secret, that why do they do it. Maybe because there are places where they have to read Faust, or at least some parts of it. It is a question, if it is worth doing experiment and offer this performance to schools too. If there were not hassle in the young heads, then they will take care for it here. The young viewers will step back forever, and they would not just beware of Faust but of everything which is theatre.

We are in the car of an underground HÉV or instead, in one of the under-time subway system. Everybody seems to arrive from a school leaving ceremony or a funeral, young and old people are sitting here in dresses, which are not elegant enough. A surprisingly easy, contemporary music is played, an English-speaking woman is whispering into the microphone. An honourable old man (István Erdős) tells on shaking voice beautiful Goethe lines. He is the old Faust. His young version is the energetic, well performing Norbert Ács. The puppet Faust, which they move, becomes more and more useless by time, it just bothers the actions. Later sometimes the side wall of the car is opened, and from the holes some figures press in, then out. The signing of the contract is made there too, Mephisto is one of the travellers. They eat apple to seal their contract.

From the point of view of the dramaturgy of the performance it is a constructed play. Many texts are brought out from their original place, and they are mixed together with the guest texts, in a new kind of order. One part of Faust is young, the other one is old, one of his side is human, the other one is the devil itself. The definition by the female beauty, the bowing in front of Helen, the desire for the unreachable one overwrite the Margit-line, which is loaded with moral burdens, then we have not talked about the only mentioned question of belief. The perfect confusion, which anyway could be perfect in the scale of actions, which is constructed perfectly in a musical way, is compounded by the fact, that some roles are performed by more actors – which is not too reasonable.

On the red line of the holding poles, sometimes blood seems to flow. If any other visual action was not come after it, this little moment would be able to sign that such a huge power it there in the personality of the visual designer, Judit Gombár. Zsófia Vesztl moves gracefully a frightening pink, waist high puppet, which nose is a bobble, which is characteristic to the one with pot hat, its body is a fossilized snail shell, its tail is a moving caudal fin of a fish, its stepping, thin legs end in hooves of an ostrich. This sniffer chimera stands in for the clingy black poodle of the original story, that comes together with Faust, it appears everywhere, where deterioration can be expected. It is frightening.

The visual effects give a relay unreasonable part of the evening. And the giant puppets, which pull shadows too, come for nothing, and Márta Szakály’s memorable beautiful matured face has become memorable for decades for nothing as she is enlightened behind the veil of the Helen’s scene, the Bosch and Dalí visions, Tanguy’s bio-structure. the puppet-monsters army of the constructor, who accepts well the vision of Magritte’s creatures of leg are for nothing if the director does not give any work for the movers of the puppets. It is very exciting to find the concrete elements of Goethe’s text in the forms of the giant water fleas and in the group of other arthropods. Here Judit Gombár is the one who assumes from Faust by Goethe. She is the one. who with the fertility of an ancient mother returns the classical, verbal inspirations. There is the base for the theatrical vision. There would be.

But many times we do not just miss the puppet-actors’ composed movements, the alive actors’ private walking, sometimes their shuffling arrival make harder the reorganisations, and aimless touches disturb the dialogues. The old Margit (Gyöngyi Blasek), comes out one of the capsules above, touches the young Faust’s forehead by her bare foot. It seems like we would put a Japanese phrase into a Hungarian or English sentence.

The crying violin of romantic films from the far east can be heard, a pouring sadness fills the corridors of damnation. Zoltán Balázs lets a kind of nice beauty to predominate in many of his performances, and when magic is about to pass away, the viewers look aside for help: can somebody tell them what it is about? Here the cooing can be similarly frightening. But the meaning of it is told accidentally, or the performance does not tell it with enough energy.

It is a pleasure to see when their foot feel ground, so the performers can find themselves by getting a puppet and a concrete exercise. For example, when the mocking Homunculus’ scene, which is drawn into a scene of a walking puppet, can be heard on Zsolt Tatai’s voice, which is not connected to any other thing, and that way it does not matter how genius it is, it remains memorable only as a closed cabaret scene. Bori Karádi, who appears as the first Margit, with high sparkling, is valid also as Mephisto. Besides Ildikó Kazinczy, who has a beautiful speech, the precise and strict Marianna Kovács there are younger and older ones – Eszter Bánky, Péter Bercsényi, Henrik Gyurkó, Ibolya Juhász, István Kemény, Gergő Pethő, Rita Radics, Judit Rusz, Anna Simándi, Csaba Teszárek – all work together with devotion.

So, there is a performance, which incredible intelligent and helpful performers got a fragmented script (dramaturg: Sándor Zsótér), in which frightening amount of mythological references harden the understanding, and which puppet-theatrical performance, in spite of the wonderful puppets and because of more reasons reach at about forty percent, from the actors’ point of view it is very uncountable and strongly wavering. Anyway, important things have happened here. We can take for sure, that as the old Goethe returned back to his work of his youth and finished it, that way, Zoltán Balázs would use again Faust’s story in some decades. And as the dark winged giant butterflies of the frame play, the Problem, the Trouble, the Need and the Burden will return, and the forcing power of the idea, which is not over thought, but which is brought on, would catch the performer.

It depends on the theatre leaders’ wisdom if they really want to entertain the young viewers with this performance.

Katalin Gabnai, Criticai Lapok, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)