Some years ago an interesting Hamlet was performed in Bárka Theatre, with the guest staging of an English man. They asked the viewers then to bring some objects with themselves, which the actors can use during the performance. At the beginning of the performance the actors decided by a draw, who would play which role during the performance (only Hamlet’s role was constant), and the point, where the given act was going on in the space, filled with viewers. An incredible artistic performance was necessary during the performances, which were built on the great number of improvisations and interactions between the viewers and actors, as the actors were working with fixed text and story, but they were improvising continuously in their play with the objects, which the viewers brought with them. They were fighting with salty sticks like swords, they drank Unicum, they prayed for toy bears, or they chose themselves a fat, muscular, black or bearded viewers on behalf of some lines of the texts, all performances were different, but the performance still remained the same.

I noticed Zoltán Balázs there, as the constant Hamlet of this series, who performed with such convincing power, overwhelming drive and genius improvisation, that I clapped my palm bloody, in spite of the fact that he could embarrass me successfully as a viewer in front of two hundred people during one of the interactions.

So this Zoltán Balázs now leads the Troupe of Maladpye, where he has taken too this kind of playful theatre, which is built on tight communication inside the troupe and with the viewers too, and he stuck his incredibly energy on the other members too. As the part of the competition program he has brought to Pécs their interpretation of King Ubu, which represents this line too. The performance, which is performed by four half naked men, has smashing power by words: the members perform with such empathy and drive, that I get tired concretely on a chair behind the last row, where the director himself watches the performance with widely opened eyes, he claps, whistles, laughs or even shakes his head at some parts, according to his evaluation.

With this enormous, stressing, almost unacceptable drive they take some newish thing into the well-known story, and then I have not mentioned yet the set of piles of newspapers, which makes me remember a dump, where they are running like mice, if they do not eat regularly the slimy balls or read and build in the story the information on any papers. I would also emphasize the two best of the performance, Ákos Orosz (Papa Ubu) and Zoltán Lendváczky (Mama Ubu, with a face structure, which is similar a little bit to Jim Carrey), who may have lost as many calories during the performance as Gebrselassie did on Marathon in London.

The viewers loved the performance in spite of the 40 degrees Celsius and the 90% humidity of smelly body odour, they clapped standing, while we were going out, we ran up to the crowd of more thousands people assaulting the theatre, who wanted to get into the Kockavető in the evening – while I was thinking about that the POSZT has seemingly grown of the place, we turned towards the lines of sausages, which were similar to a crowd of market in front of the ancient Christian tombs, in hope to get refilled with some calories.

yossarian, POSZT honlap, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)