Jarry and his mates, the once naughty ones of the Secondary Grammar School in Rennes, some four centuries ago they performed together their puppet comedy about Mr. Hébert, physics teacher, who they hated violently in an attic, which they created together. Later Jarry grabbed the opus, he “wrote” it, and he let free the bad quality, coward, dictator figure in the picture of King Ubu. During the performances, scandals came after scandals, and it could not be only because of the linguistic, but because of the situations, which could be always confused with figures and concrete political situations too. For the performance of Maladype we do not have to go up to the attic just to the flat on the first floor in the eighth district, but here the hell can exhale well during the furiously fast performance.

From outside we can think that here teenagers, who stay together after school go wild in a room, on the hill of packages of newspapers. In the side of the climbable pile of papers there is a hole, in it, Ákos Orosz’s Ubu wallows and rages like a pig in a hole, above him Zoltán Lendváczky as Mama Ubu or as a bear, walks and slides, while the other two boys – according to the programme too – perform at least eight different characters, only with the tools, which can be connected to the world of papers – with scissors, glues, wooden sticks, stapler and strings – and with the help of the flying pieces of newspapers too. Those papers, which the actors do not tear up, do not eat up, they suddenly put in front of them, read them up, and the figures of national gossip news suddenly move in the audience. Ákos Orosz’s Ubu is a real creature of hell, but this sly figure, who jumps up from the mud, is not unfamiliar on the pavements of eighth district too.

From this play can be formed a prediction of the end of the world, demonic caricature, and murderous and dark satire too, there have been example for it, and hopefully there will be some. We can very rarely enjoy this kind of free magic with enchanting rhythm, this kind of punctually composed ballet fighting of the creative madness, as Zoltán Balázs’ present performance is.

I remember Ottó Orbán’s lines, from his poem, which sings about the later tired genius of the sixties: “who were the fresh air and the sun explosion of the talent” – he wrote about them. Here it is the present, the theatre of contemporary time. These youngsters are the fresh air now, their Ubu performance is the “sun explosion of the talent”.

Katalin Gabnai, Mindenki Színháza, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)