Yes, there is a brave choice: to put on stage Faust by Goethe in any way, it is that – but courage has law aesthetic relevance. The situation is that Zoltán Balázs, the director, in the Puppet Theatre of Budapest with Goethe’s Faust kicks into a river with strong current, and he cannot be sure, that if he can get to the other side. So, the performance has a real bet.

Above all – together with the dramaturg, Sándor Zsótér – he puts the script together from both parts of the Faust; into the first one, which was created in the heat of the Sturm und Drang, into the “close looking” one of his young life, he works into many parts of the wide second one, which was made in the name of world harmony, that way they not just connected monumental and most inner human problems, which Goethe “secretly made into” (by Goethe’s own words) the Faust-legend, but they make their own work harder, then we have not talked about the actors’ tasks.

We have a hard work too – if we accepted to go along the road, which Zoltán Balázs cut in a hard way. The puppet-form is the natural surround of the Faust story, and however in the performance of the puppet theatre, Judit Gombár creates an imaginative and undefinable puppet-world, anyway the diction and the text should play the main role. These can bring in themselves the “modern people’s Iliad” (Pushkin told it about the play); the puppets can help show us another perspective of the travelling of life, of Faust’s happy story of suffering, who is chasing knowledge and passion in the shadow of the contract, which he has signed with the devil. Between Gombár’s undefinable but familiar puppets, there are monster with three eyes, a snail like creature, made from crab-fish-bird, a person of sticks and “puppet made of an actor” too: head and limbs. And of course almost all characters have their puppet counterparts – they move them in turns.

The actors are in dark suit, white shirt, and tie, they form many, seemingly similar figures, who are ready to change forms and roles: there are five Margit and there are more from Faust, Mephisto, Wagner but even from the Auerbach girl too. Above it: Norbert Ács, who performs Mephisto at the beginning make a deal with the old Faust – the contract is signed by apple eating, anyway the situation was the same in case of the first business, signed with the devil – then he will be the young Faust too.

The place is a subway car – moving and standing at the same time: everything happens with Faust in the subway car, which is running on its way meantime. The happening is mostly the text of course – mainly during the first part there are many problems with the diction, the followability of it, and its understandability. The actors tell with humility, in disciplined way, but mostly hardly understandably – and many times seems to be: they can hardly understand it – Zoltán Jékely and Zoltán Kálnoky wonderful lines, and while the director puts one another the different motives and turns, we are getting lost in the confusion of Faust. In the young Faust’s rush, the searching passion to find “Helen in each woman” and the Margit-love are stuck to one another. Margit’s giant pearl necklace and her misery; “you do not even have Christian belief” – Faust accused her that way, the sinful one (and who have seen, can remember the same scene from the performance of the Deutsches Theater, directed by Thalheimer). Meanwhile creatures with wings, giant shadows, curtains and clothes grab our attention, everything is another character and another turn. I have told, it is hard to follow, it is easy to get lost in it, but it is not allowed to give it up.

The director does not give it up – the second part is much more completed, pure. It is true, that time almost all actors move a puppet too – and it is interesting to see, that they are freed up by it: the performances are fuller, more self-confident and richer. And Faust does again a tour “in the world of dreams” towards Helen – “the reborn ancient past” – and they have a rest in Arcadia, but then he is enchanted immediately by Ikarus’ “must fly” obsession, and the wild waves of the sea catch his discursive imagination. But in this second part, Faust’s and the prisoned Margit’s scene is in the middle: the mother’s psyche, who killed her child, is almost broken, and she throws herself into her reappeared lover’s arms with desperate reluctance. Gyöngyi Blasek’s Margit and Norbert Ács’ Faust find each other once more – it is a film-like, slow, tragic and lyric scene at the same time, when the woman seems like to be born, it is hard for her to climb through the narrow window into the men’s arm, who hugs for herself, and with long and strong steps takes her out. They see Philemon and Baucist – Henrik Gyurkó and Márta Szakály are sitting on a bench and moving their own puppets, while they are telling the text – and Faust desires the small, idyllic cottage, and Mephisto fires the house on them...

And that time the old Faust – István Erdős – steps on stage again; he is sitting, but moving anyway, as the continuous movement was the importance and aim of the deal, they have signed with Mephisto. And this saves him – Goethe saves his exactly with it – from Mephisto: death catches him in movement. "I’ve rioted through all the world’s delight, I’ve seized whatever pleased me on the fly, What couldn't be held, I let go by, And what I lost, I put out of my sight." This saves and takes to the other side Zoltán Balázs’ performance in the Puppet Theatre: “Though ghosts beset him, let him onward stride, In marching find both bliss and pain, Contented not a moment to remain!”

Judit Csáki, Magyar Narancs, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)