This last phrase can make things a little bit simpler, as at the beginning of the performance we can see a religious ceremony, in the middle of which the Cardinal is standing, who will turn soon to Bosola, who has done the scale of terrible sins. This is a strong picture, which marks the coordinates properly: it is a sacral space, on its axles with the characters, who have done the vilest sins, if you like it, with the pure evil. The Duchess of Malfi, which is directed by Zoltán Balázs, uses symbolic, mystic elements too, and it is characterised with the thinking, which can be associated with them.

This time the director does not follow the way of interpretation in its traditional meaning; the strongly styled, autonomous stage language is not connected strongly to the turns of Webster’s drama, and it does not have any connection with the atmosphere and mechanism of effects of the play. The play by the writer of Shakespeare-era, gives a creepy picture of the dark side of human nature. Between the aberrant, half-mad figures, exclusive revenge mission, cumulative wave mountains, and episode characters, who are painted with strong contours, there are two really fascinating main characters: the Duchess of Malfi, who tempts the fate, with the consistent acceptance of her feelings. Bosola as well, who starts a really logical and at the same time irrational massacre, after he has thought over the consequences of his acts and he is sympathetic with them. It is a shockingly modern psycho-horror, with counted strong effective elements, perfect dramaturgy and witty dialogues. The ambivalent roles and actions offer more possibility of interpretation, which can characterise the tone, colours and stress of the performance.

However Zoltán Balázs creates a special world on stage without opening the text but parallel to it. In the focus of it there is not the individual inner hell, but instead the hell of the (each) world, which is created by people. Judit Gombár’s spectacular, costumes, which define the play stylistically, turns the accepting attention towards eastern philosophy and attitude of life. The fossilized, statue-like head points towards the sky and reaches over the characters’ long dresses, and two giant and emphasized puppet-like hands. Because of it, in their movements there is something puppet- and statue-like; as they would be some kind of captives of worlds, which is similar to the hell on earth, and which has lost its sacral content. Only death can change it; at that moment, they lose their statue-like heads and puppet-like limbs. (Bosola’s character is emphasized – it is understandable, it is too obvious – from the group of the characters, as he does not wear these.)

The other styled elements are connected to the reserved tempo of movement: the music, the singing of some parts of the text and that somewhat strongly reduced performing style, which avoids usage of all visual tools. That way the turns of action become irrelevant too; the killer gets his victims unstoppably, the stops, the drives, the role of randomness can be negligible. The characters’ psyches are not so important, but what they can express. Because of it all the main characters – László Sinkó (Bosola), Bori Péterfy (Duchess of Malfi), János Kulka (Cardinal), Zsolt László (Ferdinand) – as the episode characters too (between them maybe Zalán Makranczi as Antonio and Eszter Bánfalvi as Julia get the greatest part from the performance) can work with their presence and build from it. They do it with not the same intensity, but on the important points usually strongly, they can show their personalities and subjectivities too.

Anyway the richness of form and the commendable professional performance are for nothing; the performance can hardly fascinate me, the acts on stage have predictable effect after a while. Zoltán Balázs now cannot create a system of signs on the stage, which can overwrite the play, and which is not only valid on its own, but interesting too, which can stand in for everything, which is deliberately missing from the performance, so the essence of the original play, its extreme effective elements, and its stressed and changing situations. The text is too reduced to remain meaningful, and the created visual world and the thoughts, which are expressed through it, cannot fill simply the performance. The performance seems to be rather flat – not only from the point of view of the basic play, but of its own possibilities, of the richness of the used tools. The same gestures, situations, scales of scenes are repeated almost ritually after a while, the banality of some parts of the text gets ironic light (I cannot always decide if it is deliberate or not). Not all of these can form a real tension on stage, the actions do not have real current and power. The artistically built world is getting further, leaves us indifferent. The vision effects our eyes for a while, its meaning reaches me spiritually sometimes, but the performance cannot make us fell emotionally the hells of puppet-like life nor for a moment.

Balázs Urbán, Kultúra.hu, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)