Zoltán Balázs directed Faust with rich fantasy: he put on stage 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.

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; that way, more than three hours long stream of text is flowing in the performance. The noble styled diction of the theatre of words and its diversified structure of motifs make is hard to understand by adult and the teenager viewers: the following of the turns of actions, the structure of mythological references expects extraordinary attention and some kind of knowledge of the play. (The programme does not mention translators, maybe Zoltán Jékely and László Kálnoky’s little bit archaic text is the basis of the performance.)

At the beginning of the performance, we are in a green subway car, Faust and Mephisto sign a contract for life and death with each other, as passengers, who are wearing black dress, white shirt, black ties, at the beginning of their common long journey. Their tiny alter egos, as small marionette puppets, repeat, watch, comment their actions and thoughts. 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. 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.

Zoltán Balázs uses maximally the scenic possibilities: in the big space the performers climb or lean into the inside of the subway car through the window, or slide down on high red poles; much bigger and bizarre magical creatures fill the stage, and the movers of the puppets play and live brilliantly together with them. One of the funniest one of them, is a small person of strings, who shows the playfulness of a chirping child, his active and fast moving and holding, his acrobatic tricks.

Judit Gombár, the designer of set and costume has created a lavish visual world for the performance. The flexible, active, worm-like or anthropomorphic figures are poetic in spite of their monster-like nature too, and they are not totally independent from the Goethe-like texts. “Here you down, are looking for phosphor light: / it is a soul, Psyche, it has wings, / you can tear it out, and then just a worn it is” – we can hear Mephisto’s chant that way, and those places of the text, which fix special images, are mostly uncountable in the play.
The tangible creatures of imagination “live in” the depth and height of the stage. At one of the elevated moments of the performance, a giant, half-cut giant statue of a female face is rolled in at the back part of the stage, behind its moving jaw, people are climbing out. Other time, tiny, flappy, bird-like creatures are flying in the height. Finally, at the symbolic appearance of death, black dressed women are coming up onto the stage (the allegorical figures of the Problem, the Trouble, the Need, the Burden) with giant colourful butterfly wings on their backs. They are standing around those, who are about to leave life, the other performers are coming too, and they create together the melancholic poetic vision of thinking about passing, about life and death.

This kind of harmony of text and vision is not always created in the performance: sometimes vision becomes independent, and it leaves the monotonously sounding text. And if the puppets start living their independent lives, the space of association widens infinitively, and the signs are away from the meaning. The artistic pictures are there not only to show dramatic actions, but the projection of soul and psyche too.

Balázs’ staging has a special arc and waving movement. The actors are sitting almost motionlessly in the opening scene, and they tell very silently, in static way Goethe’s lines. The act, with its two hours long performance, seems to be infinitely long. The second act is the space of more active actions, and it has thicker dramatic material. 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 transitions and multiplication of characters are between the pillars of the director’s ideas, 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 pink, fish-like monster is on the stage all through the performance, it “comments” on the happenings and the passing of time with the moving of its caudal fin. It walks like a human or rushes over the stage. The real bet of Zoltán Balázs’ performance is the sensual showing of time. Of the passing time, of the symbolic time of stylized actions.

Dezső Kovács, Revizoronline, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)