Zsófia Tillinger: A queen’s drama in one act
The Duchess of Malfi is a typical thriller drama of John Webster’s (?1570-?1630) era. Its story brings the whole props of this genre: siblings’ love affair, vendetta, intrigue, haunting dead people and so on; but the over-thinking of the play by one of Shakespeare’s peer from the director’s point of view is quite different, he deals with questions, which are actual even today – silently.
The real expressive power of the performance, which was performed in the National Theatre on 15th May, is the costumes. Those, who are sitting in the first lines – between them myself too – can accept the vison, which appears in front of us, with smaller amazement. The stage is divided into six-eight parts by parallel lines of benches, the actors perform sitting on them, in front of them, behind them or standing on them: everybody is in two-coloured robes (white and an individual colour according to the role), on their head there are giant plaster caps, on the top of these an expressionless white face stare at the viewers. Their hands are replaced by giant plaster gloves, which reach out from the long leaves of their robes with an individual rigid hand positions. The whole play moves in this inseparable visual world, and expresses head to head (in our case above head instead) the problems of an almost four hundred years old drama and of our everyday life.
The Duchess of Malfi (Bori Péterfy), who became a widow at a very young age is searching for a new husband for herself, and in spite of the fact, that her two brothers follow all of her footsteps, she has managed to get married to her chamberlain, who is under her level. From this secret marriage three children were born. When the spy, Bosola (László Sinkó) tells about it to the two brothers (the cardinal is János Kulka, Ferdinánd is Zsolt László), the duchess - recognising the danger – acts immediately: she hides her children at her maid (Cariola is Andrea Söptei), and sends her husband (Antonio is Zalán Makranczi) abroad – while she was closed into a dark tower, on her own by her siblings. The first act of the play would stop somewhere here – if there were, but there was not any – the drama is going on anyway, and the characters are getting fewer and fewer – in the end only the spy remains alive.
Anyway, the play is not so easy. The communication between the actors are confusing – the recitative, monotonous, or even in Gregorian style, too graceful, or even too theatrical, unstressed dialogues cannot refer to any kind of human connection between the characters. The giant gloves with their rigid hand positions cannot provide space at all for nonverbal formation of connections: the gestures are limited to that one movement, in which that hand has remained. The huge caps and the plaster masks on them, and the weight of the giant robes hinder the free moving – the characters’ frozen position, the robot-like limitation of their actions divide them not only from each other, but from us too.
This division is there, we cannot avoid it all through the performance, as this is the main lesson of the play too, the costumes, the sets and the music are all serving its representation.
While we are listening to the Duchess and Antonio’s dialogue of love, we cannot forget the expressionless masks above the longing faces. What do they feel? Nothing? They awkwardly hug each other with their giant hands, the gesture is cold and distant, but the text, which they tell is full of feelings. The murderous rage inside the brothers, their fears, the pity and confused feelings are ridiculous, and the actors also work on it, so that we cannot take them seriously: for example, János Kulka’s cry: Help, help! cannot be more monotonous and lifeless. We can just feel the love towards their sibling, when we can see Ferdinand’s palm resting on the Duchess’ inner thigh, we have a kind of uncertain suspicion. The music does not even help to get closer to the characters’ mental world; the compositions, which are similar to Kraftwerk and Balanescu’s music world cannot form a whole something: these are violin solos, which are playing on our nerve fibres – trapping drums of horror parodies and crying strings – then in love symphonies and almost passionate dialogues of the cello and violin it still remains strange for us.
The play itself is a symbol, all characters’ aim is the self-identity, which they can gain only in death – when they can get rid of their mask of their caps, and the unhealthy position of their huge hands. Only one character does not need it, he is Bosola, the spy, who can kill anybody, but he just smiles on death: as he does not wear neither cap, nor mask, or rigid hand, he cannot be killed, because he has already been dead in his betrayals back and forth, in his life without any connections.
The big experiment: what will happen if a costume fanatic director has over thought a not so popular drama of the XVI. century in futuristic conception, with grey sets and grey people? Unfortunately nothing great. However we can understand the lesson, the director’s conception, the symbols of costumes, and the ideas it would like to express, but we cannot tell that the performance is enjoyable. The already mentioned keeping of distance and affectation have reached their aims: the whole drama, together with all of its characters remain totally strange. Hopefully the performers aimfully, and not because of their faults remain forgettable (except for Bosola, the only human character). The futuristic visual world, the grey walls and the black benches, and their monotonous characters all help not to feel ourselves at home in the performance, we are moving without any kind of empathy on our seats, and the performance, which we get almost for two hours, leave unpleasant and tiring experience in us. Otherwise, it can rise up some interesting questions: Is our life so humdrum? Are we wearing so permanent masks in all our human relationships? What is this mask anyway? Our mask, which we show out is really connected to us so much, can only death mean some kind of relief? The performance deals with many similar questions, which can become a thriller drama now, not because of the mass death according to this new kind of interpretation...
Zsófia Tillinger, Kultúra&Kritika, 2009
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)
The real expressive power of the performance, which was performed in the National Theatre on 15th May, is the costumes. Those, who are sitting in the first lines – between them myself too – can accept the vison, which appears in front of us, with smaller amazement. The stage is divided into six-eight parts by parallel lines of benches, the actors perform sitting on them, in front of them, behind them or standing on them: everybody is in two-coloured robes (white and an individual colour according to the role), on their head there are giant plaster caps, on the top of these an expressionless white face stare at the viewers. Their hands are replaced by giant plaster gloves, which reach out from the long leaves of their robes with an individual rigid hand positions. The whole play moves in this inseparable visual world, and expresses head to head (in our case above head instead) the problems of an almost four hundred years old drama and of our everyday life.
The Duchess of Malfi (Bori Péterfy), who became a widow at a very young age is searching for a new husband for herself, and in spite of the fact, that her two brothers follow all of her footsteps, she has managed to get married to her chamberlain, who is under her level. From this secret marriage three children were born. When the spy, Bosola (László Sinkó) tells about it to the two brothers (the cardinal is János Kulka, Ferdinánd is Zsolt László), the duchess - recognising the danger – acts immediately: she hides her children at her maid (Cariola is Andrea Söptei), and sends her husband (Antonio is Zalán Makranczi) abroad – while she was closed into a dark tower, on her own by her siblings. The first act of the play would stop somewhere here – if there were, but there was not any – the drama is going on anyway, and the characters are getting fewer and fewer – in the end only the spy remains alive.
Anyway, the play is not so easy. The communication between the actors are confusing – the recitative, monotonous, or even in Gregorian style, too graceful, or even too theatrical, unstressed dialogues cannot refer to any kind of human connection between the characters. The giant gloves with their rigid hand positions cannot provide space at all for nonverbal formation of connections: the gestures are limited to that one movement, in which that hand has remained. The huge caps and the plaster masks on them, and the weight of the giant robes hinder the free moving – the characters’ frozen position, the robot-like limitation of their actions divide them not only from each other, but from us too.
This division is there, we cannot avoid it all through the performance, as this is the main lesson of the play too, the costumes, the sets and the music are all serving its representation.
While we are listening to the Duchess and Antonio’s dialogue of love, we cannot forget the expressionless masks above the longing faces. What do they feel? Nothing? They awkwardly hug each other with their giant hands, the gesture is cold and distant, but the text, which they tell is full of feelings. The murderous rage inside the brothers, their fears, the pity and confused feelings are ridiculous, and the actors also work on it, so that we cannot take them seriously: for example, János Kulka’s cry: Help, help! cannot be more monotonous and lifeless. We can just feel the love towards their sibling, when we can see Ferdinand’s palm resting on the Duchess’ inner thigh, we have a kind of uncertain suspicion. The music does not even help to get closer to the characters’ mental world; the compositions, which are similar to Kraftwerk and Balanescu’s music world cannot form a whole something: these are violin solos, which are playing on our nerve fibres – trapping drums of horror parodies and crying strings – then in love symphonies and almost passionate dialogues of the cello and violin it still remains strange for us.
The play itself is a symbol, all characters’ aim is the self-identity, which they can gain only in death – when they can get rid of their mask of their caps, and the unhealthy position of their huge hands. Only one character does not need it, he is Bosola, the spy, who can kill anybody, but he just smiles on death: as he does not wear neither cap, nor mask, or rigid hand, he cannot be killed, because he has already been dead in his betrayals back and forth, in his life without any connections.
The big experiment: what will happen if a costume fanatic director has over thought a not so popular drama of the XVI. century in futuristic conception, with grey sets and grey people? Unfortunately nothing great. However we can understand the lesson, the director’s conception, the symbols of costumes, and the ideas it would like to express, but we cannot tell that the performance is enjoyable. The already mentioned keeping of distance and affectation have reached their aims: the whole drama, together with all of its characters remain totally strange. Hopefully the performers aimfully, and not because of their faults remain forgettable (except for Bosola, the only human character). The futuristic visual world, the grey walls and the black benches, and their monotonous characters all help not to feel ourselves at home in the performance, we are moving without any kind of empathy on our seats, and the performance, which we get almost for two hours, leave unpleasant and tiring experience in us. Otherwise, it can rise up some interesting questions: Is our life so humdrum? Are we wearing so permanent masks in all our human relationships? What is this mask anyway? Our mask, which we show out is really connected to us so much, can only death mean some kind of relief? The performance deals with many similar questions, which can become a thriller drama now, not because of the mass death according to this new kind of interpretation...
Zsófia Tillinger, Kultúra&Kritika, 2009
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)