More critics have been published about Faust, which is directed by Zoltán Balázs, than about the whole term of the Puppet Theatre of Budapest. That kind of newspapers have dealt with the performance (Magyar Narancs, Élet és Irodalom, Népszabadság), which do not write about performances of troupes for children. About the puppet theatre version of Faust, we publish a critical review now.

The version of text

Many critic emphasize the braveness of the try. According to Judit Csáki it is a “brave choice” if they would put “any version of Goethe’s Faust on stage”. To it László Deme Sz. adds that “the genre of puppet art gets out more and more boldly from the box of the theatre for children”.

According to Tamás Tarján the play is “one of the masterpieces of the world literature”, “the most importantly worked out theme of travelling”, for “its rank, its length and the dignity of its weight are also connected. So the one hundred and ninety minutes long beautiful performance of the Puppet Theatre of Budapest in reasonable.” “However some disadvantages come from it too” – he adds to it. (The length of the performance is mentioned in any way by almost all critics. For its second term, the performance has become shorter a lot, so it does not last up until 11pm, but finishes at 9.45pm.)

Tamás Koltai has another opinion about Goethe’s play: “Faust is the book, which is known by everybody, but nobody has read it. It is an exaggeration. The students of the German courses have had it. Especially in German” – he wrote. (“Maybe it is performed in the Puppet Theatre in German...It can be, it would not disturb the understanding, only a little bit more struggle would not mean a lot” – he added to it ironically.) He mentioned the most important problem in connection with the critical acceptance of the performance, by name, that how much the performance is understandable and followable.

The performance interferes in to the original text by Goethe a lot. Obviously, it is necessary as the printed, at least 500 pages long version of the complex play can hardly be staged in its original version. But in case of Faust we cannot talk about simple cuts. “The director and the dramaturg of the performance, Sándor Zsótér has made a fragmental, a little bit overedited and compact version from the two parts of the giant tragedy” – Dezső Kovács wrote it. “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” – Judit Csáki added to it.

According to László Deme Sz.” the most important change according to their dramaturgical structure compared to the original one is Helena’s figure, who appears earlier and more times, while the Margit-motif slides backward. With is the remaining parts of the two parts of the tragedy are connected to one another more organically, and the desire of love is more emphasised and the exposure of human longing becomes more balanced and complex.” According to András Sztrókay: “the performance – as Faust himself does too – commutes between the two women’s worlds.”

About the traceability of the new version of the text, the opinions are divided. Dezső Kovács, who wrote appreciatively about the performance, mentioned too that “the turns of actions, the structure of mythological references expects extraordinary attention and some kind of knowledge of the play”. Judit Csáki says that the director and the dramaturg with the connection of the taken scenes from the two parts of the play “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.” Tamás Koltai anyway – in that sarcastic tone, which characterises his whole writing – calls the complication of the two parts a pure mistake. (“Zoltán Balázs – freely after Polonius – might have thought that Goethe would not be hard enough for the actors – and for us – must be good to make it harder.”) According to Koltai the text, which serves as a basic material for the performance is too ideological and abstract (if I understand well his ironical references). First he has referred to Claus Peymann and Peter Stein’s Faust performances, the earlier one made a “blasphemous comedy” the later one a “spectacular performance of popular theatre” from the play, in a perfect order, the first part and the second one, but they worked for the doltish Germans, for whom well-knowingly the complicated and even ideological thinking is strange. But here the viewers want abstraction, especially in case of performance for youngsters, I know, I have seen many of them lately.”)

Word theatre, diction

in connection with the version of the text we should not talk about the connection of the two parts of Faust, but about the technique of abbreviations and cuts. But the critics have not mentioned these. However the performance is characterized by that process, which is common in contemporary theatres, that it eliminates all elements, which would create context, it does care about the traditional building of scenes (about with Goethe still did), it does not sketch out situations and does not open the characters’ relationships. Instead of it, with the emphasis of the most important places of texts, it gives the essence of the happenings of the play. (Maybe that is the reason why Koltai thinks that this version of the text is ideological.) That way, the reduction of the text turns our attention more towards the verbal statements, rather than the actions. Obviously Judit Csáki wrote because of it that “mainly the text is what is happening.” Tamás Tarján in connection with the performance talks about the reign of word theatre “which was condemned many times in the era of post-dramatic theatre”.

But according to Dezső Kovács “the noble versioned diction of the word theatre...gives a hard exercise” to the performers too. Many critics have mentioned the diction as one of the biggest problem of the performance. “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” – Judit Csáki wrote it. M.G.P. is stricter: “It is good that they do not rolling the poem, but the voiced consonants are ill, they sound on voices, which are corroded by sodium hydroxide.” Tamás Tarján talked about the “consciously accepted monotony of the tone” and about the punctual, colt articulation”, which are obviously in connection with the director’s ideas. “The lines and rhyme-pairs are shown more than the longer parts. The play needs about twenty minutes to find its own volume. The quietness is an aesthetic aspect here, but the over lowered voice is annoying.” Koltai has made sarcastic remarks in connection with the actors’ performances too: “I appreciate the actors’ performances and even bow my head in front of them with honest admiration – and with sympathy – they have learnt a lot of texts, and they do disciplined what has been told to them.”

The changings of roles

Many mentioned, that not only the complexity of the version of the text, and the problems of diction it is hard to follow the performance, but because of the “figural changes” (Tarján) too. “First of all the viewers would be interested in: who is who in the crowed of performers on the stage anyway – M.G.P. noted it – “It is not easy to answer it: there are men and women in black suits. Many of them play one role.” “The director multiplies Faust, Mephisto and Margit: an old, a young and a puppet Faust, five Margits and at least the same amount of Mephisto are changing one another. The actors are all performing in suits, those who play the same roles do not wear any distinctive signs of costume, so we cannot follow all the time, that who play which role” – Sztrókay said it. According to Koltai “another level of hardness, not to be able to know precisely who is who, because then we can connect the texts to characters, it would not mean any good, maybe we understand what they want to tell.”

Anyway according to Dezső Kovács “the transitions and multiplication of characters are between the pillars of the director’s ideas.” From it he emphasized that at the beginning of the performance “István Erdős performs the old Faust. He shows an ageless, resigned, wise thinker, who sums up the experiences of an active life in his monologue. Later he appears in a younger body, as Mephisto and Margit’s figures are doubled too.” “The contract happens with the ceremonious eating of an apple, which is the symbol of Fall, but they do not begin the Margit-line, but Helena appears as old too, Márta Szakály plays her. After it, they start the happenings of the first part of the original text, more exactly that way the so far young Mephisto becomes the young Faust” – László Deme Sz. wrote it. At the place of the young Mephisto, who is performed by Norbert Ács, the similarly young Gergő Pethő steps, who takes into “dark depth” the figure, “and gives cold inner side to the devil” (Nyulassay).

Dezső Kovács has thought the changing of ages and their copying on one another to be an important motif: “as well as the figure of Helena the beautiful, who embodies sensual beauty and love, and she appears more stressed in the performance. The dreamy female figure can be seen through the painted veil, the performer, Márta Szakály pulls the veil on herself and covers with it: the young and old faces are copied on each other.”

The game with ages goes on in case of the female main character too. “Margit stands in front of us, performed by many actors, in changing showing” – Tamás Tarján said it, but none of the critic has analysed that the director makes actresses with different ages (and habitus) perform the different stations of lives of the figure in the changing of the Margit-roles. Attila Nyulassy sees only the beginning and the end of this road (Bori Karádi performs the young, wonderful and virgin Margit, Gyöngyi Blasek emphasizes the prudence and true love from her character). Csáki emphasized just the final phase: “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.”

Puppet- and visual world

In the performance the multiplying of the characters are made to be more complicated, that the figures’ “their tiny alter egos, as small marionette puppets, repeat, watch, comment their actions and thoughts.”(Dezső Kovács) “The real characters’ marionette partners function sometimes as the characters’ souls, then as simple (if it is liked: puppet-theatre-like) source of humour” – Sztrókay said it. Most of the critics mentioned the person of sticks as one of the most memorable parts of the performance, but nobody has mentioned that it is about Homunculus’ embodiment.

Many writings refer to the fact that the performance of it in a puppet theatre is not far from Faust’s story. M. G. P. refers to the puppet traditions of the topic, but he emphasizes that “the Faust by the Puppet Theatre of Budapest is more graceful than its predecessor on the market.” According to Csáki “the puppet-form is the natural surround of the Faust story... but in this performance anyway “the diction and the text should play the main role” and not the puppets.

The performance becomes more vivid any time the puppets get bigger stress than the saving of text – M. G. P. stated it. Tarján noted that the numbers of the puppets “get bigger to the second part...their sizes get bigger”. M. G. P. mentioned that “Judit Gombár got the puppets from the puppet performances of different cultures (wayang puppet- and shadow play, marionette) and from the traditions of fine arts.” Dezső Kovács said that “As the performance is going on and getting into deeper and deeper (metaphysical) places, the stage is getting filled with fabulous creatures of fantasy, smaller and bigger, human sized or more giant puppet figures.” According to Csáki “Judit Gombár creates an imaginative and undefinable puppet-world.” According to her “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.” Dezső Kovács stated that “not only puppets appear, but some mythical-playful-surreal creatures, as the figures from Hieronymus Bosch paintings or from modern sci-fi films would get alive in front of us.”

This fine-artistic way is mentioned in many critics. László Deme Sz. also talks about “puppet creatures over the reality” and about “gothic mutants from the hybridization of the hellish creatures of the Walpurgis-night and Hyeronimus Bosch”. He added that “Zoltán Balázs’ staging leaves as much the traditions of natural puppet art, that he puts at once the puppet-like elements into the stylized and overturned, but hard to encode world of the most contemporary theatre, and he builds around with surreal gestures.” From Dezső Kovács’ point of view the widening of the genre of the puppet theatre can create complex genres in the performance: “Goethe’s dramatic poem, which deals with dimensions of existence, as a visionary poetic performance in the Puppet Theatre of Budapest. The connected performance of actors and puppets results in ritual theatre of vision that is turning into fantasy.” According to him “Judit Gombár has created a lavish visual world.”

In contrary to it Tamás Koltai thinks that all of it is “just decoration, it cannot be seen and (the different puppets) were not get into the process of the performance too. According to Sztrókay “Zoltán Balázs suppressing the action and diction and directs a totally static picture.” László Deme Sz. added to it that “in spite of all its beauty the world of stage is so much constructed and organised” that “the enjoyment of meeting up with them, are so much hidden...A vision is put on stage, which operates as some kind of sensual machine, and not as visions of human moods.” (In connection with it Tamás Paár starts his writing that “I could write a praising critic (about the performance), if I did not take into consideration its enjoy-ability.”)

Summary

It seems that Zoltán Balázs’ Faust version in the Puppet Theatre divides the critics very much. Some of them have rejected clearly the performance, they find it to be boring, abstract, inconsistent. Others are on the opposite side: they have talked about a “Faust variation with rich fantasy”. But there are more of them, who have their opinion between the two. “In spite of the difficulties of acceptance there are many effective moments in the performance” – one of them writes it. “It is hard to follow, easy to get lost in it, but you mustn’t give it up” – tells the other one. Then adds to it: “the second part of the performance is more mature and cleaner too.” Others agree with it: “Which is felt to be mannered minimalist staging during the two hours long first part, it becomes tensed sub-textual and sub-picturesque during the second part of the performance. It reports abundantly without telling anything.”

Kristóf Bíró, Ellenfény, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)