The Maladype has been searching for its place since its formation – now in the physical meaning of the word. The beginning homelessness, after the long flat-share in Bárka Theatre, and next to the latest presence in Thália, they have opened their own Base in a flat in the centre. For the official opening of the new performing place, the troupe has chosen Alfred Jarry’s King Ubu.

The King Ubu, which was grown of from a brutally sarcastic horrific student trick by Alfred Jarry, in the performance of Maladype, loses its cloth, which the world literature and theatre literature latter appreciation have put on it (that theatrical and stage generated elevation, seriousness of the even absurd, surreal quality), and it steps out of the theatrical surrounding and becomes a fantasy of students, in Zoltán Balázs’ staging King Ubu is an aggressive, wilful group’s of children’s afternoon play – and it can emphasize the special eventuality of the dramaturgy of the play, and the fantasy, cruel and childishly mad, nature of the action.

However, the director does not leave the understanding of the conception on chance (as before the beginning of the performance he roughly interprets it by telling it to the viewers), the great amounts of symbols are not hard to understand too. The presently artistically passive Maladype member, Kamilla Fátyol’s costumes are all sematic and over stressed childish clothes, the actors use only those tools, which are necessary in school (wooden sticks, glue, tape) but the actors can imitate in children’s unmistakable way the sounds of explosions or the fighting. Besides all these Balázs rapidly emphasizes that this is the pre-figuration of “boyish” rough game: Zoltán Lendváczky performs all female roles, who is put in the mother’s dress, which is too big and always slides down.

A huge pile of newspapers rules the corner room of the flat-base, which is for performances (it was also designed by Kamilla Fátyol); the more than hundreds of packages of newspapers surround a narrow hole – this space, which is about one or one and half square metres big, in which Ákos Orosz, who performs Ubu, can move. During the almost two hours, he never climbs out of it, either he is in the sea or on the throne, or in battle according to the text, and his closeness can help more than anything else to place the performance: however, Ubu here does not move anywhere in the real space – the place of all movements and actions is his own inner, mental space. It can represent well the position of the king, of the self-centred child, who can move the play-actions with his thoughts, as the world goes around him by word too. The pile of newspapers itself (which besides itself can stands for food, and from it the actors eat many papers, which can be enough for many days) and it is the most interesting symbol of all: it can make us remember the newspaper collections from schools, but the information written in newspapers can help the children’s imagination – in connection with it, we can see that demagogue thesis as symbol, according to which, the Ubu-like human type does not live on just in theatres, but newspapers are full of with these Ubu-like people types. Zoltán Balázs anyway builds in the present sometimes into his absolute ageless performance: the actors sometimes read up some news, all the Polish nobles have their names from the characters of newspapers.

From all these it can be obvious, that in the Papa Ubu by Maladype, there is nothing from the conventional (if it exists) Ubu performing, from the overweight, burping-cursing ugly something – Ákos Orosz performs mostly a naughty, spoiled child. This childish nature is true for the other three actors too in on a smaller scale – Zsolt Páll’s performance is more varied, complex partly because the roles, which he plays are more mature too; Lendváczky and Ádám Tompa perform, that they play roles, and the help with it Orosz’s performance. And however, they can do it all through the performance, this type of playing style is not always suitable to keep the attention up – especially because the performance and the text too sometimes would need to be cut. That way, the performance and the text sometimes make each other weaker, and it annoyingly breaks the flow of the performance too.

Zoltán Balázs has perfectly felt the nature of world, which can be matched to Jarry maximally, and with good ideas fulfils it consistently – with it he can create a very valid interpretation in most of its elements. Its validity cannot make easily acceptable or immediately enjoyable the performance, and Jarry’s special world is just partly the reason of it. The overall picture can be made better – its continuous performing will help to unify the levels of quality.

Báling Kovács, Kultúra.hu, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)