MGP: King Ubu
2. Mikszáth Square. The first floor. The Maladype Theatre has formed their base in the flat at the end of the corridor. Here in the corner of a spacious room, they perform Alfred Jarry play, which is to annoy the viewers, his provocative wildness of students. Who would be shocked by the famous first word of the drama – with Zoltán Jékely’s invention: “shit” – from which such a confusion started in Paris in 1896, as 66 years before. when in Hugo’s poetic drama, in the Hernani everybody was shocked by the fact that in an elevated play, in an ordinary street-like way called an “old silly one”, one of the Spanish cartoon heroes. The fighting noise of Hernani is caused by the first line, Hugo went against the rules, and ion the second line he broke the cesura of the alexandrine. He did not follow the rules, the sense, when he made recite the “stairs of a hidden way”.
Ubu was made in a group in the lyceum of Rennes. They figured out angrily their overweight physics teacher with their collected ideas. Jarry and Henri Morin wrote the marionette play, with the help of the older Charles Morin. They performed it in Morins’ attic in 1888, with the title of The Polish. Jarry later appropriated the student trick. He made Ubu individual, he is the coward tyrant, he is the ordinary civilian, who is put between Shakespeare- and Victor Hugo-like didactic scandals.
We do not have to mention all hardships of Jarry’s drama parody. First it was performed Hungarian on the practicing Ódry stage of the theatre art university, in the title role, with the diabolic György Linka and János Bruck directed it (1967). It was swept away by censorship. The director student ends up in London. Béla Éles in Tatabánya together with amateurs, worked it over well, under György Aczél’s protective arms in Pécs he was followed by István Paál in 1987, then Zsámbéki made success of it in Katona in 1984. It was always a political rebellious act against the monotonous made order of performance and ordered common-taste. The opening word of “shit” is calm. It is settled. It is a common treasure of common speech. It does not shock us. It slides by the ears.
There is no scandal. The viewers do not whistle. The viewers’ aesthetic scandal is put off. It is not disturbed by rudeness. The subversive drama-like things calm down into a nice theatrical lamb by Zoltán Balázs’ hands. They do not tease the viewers in order to make them “active”. In contrast to it: the horrifying drama has become an enchanting performance.
After the rude words to the viewers have calmed down, in Jarry remain as much aesthetic widening of viewers, it worth comparing to the 110 hundred years old play, which goes on with naturalistic tools and teases the taste.
It was noted, that when Jarry pushed his finger into the important tragic writer’s hand of the Comédie, he opened his partner as a key, as he was a door, on the premiere Antoine stood up offensively, the god of soil smelled naturalism, and he left the performance in a protesting way.
Ubu on Mikszáth Square is not a political freedom. It is nor the partisan activity against the canonical aesthetic. The informal imagination, the artistic convincing power and the throne reign of the playfulness, which gets rid of its chains.
Four men perform it. Ákos Orosz alone is Papa Ubu, the greedy civilian monster. He does not wear fake stomach. He performed with his own, half naked. With his freely flying fat, with fatty cushions, which are ready to get free. But the form of his eyes, under his half closed lids, looks his dirty attention, with determined coward malice he can stand in for something familiar, something, which is closer to our present days, than to Macbeth by Shakespeare, for Boggerlas’ role Jarry caught a thirteen years old beautiful young boy, with long hair. The figure is performed by Zsolt Páll, together with other eight roles. Sometimes in his mouth we can see frightening false teeth. The others steal sometimes dental-fillers into their mouth to change their face. Captain Bordure and together with other eight separated roles Ádám Tompa shines till the end, who is muscular enlightened from inside. He stole a moustache under his nose. Like light butterflies they are flying with their wings and they express determination, fear, pity heroism under his nose. They live through the childish joke of clowns with shameless seriousness. They are honest, as the school of Rennes before are. They enchant the viewers with easy elegance of artists, with all those things, which professional actors would never do. Zoltán Lendváczky in the transvestite role of Mama Ubu, can put from right and left his black corset under in armpit with a sharp movement. After it he does not want to be womanish neither with thinned voice nor with the fixing of his unrealistic breast. He looks with innocent flirtation, as an ideal Ophelia.
They avoid all artistic traditional clichés. They are childishly happy. And they are entertaining too.
In the corner of the hall there are connected piles of newspapers. There are risen gradually. They are walking on it. There is a deep hole in the middle. Papa Ubu is standing in it. From the newspapers of today they tear down properties for themselves, they eat them as veal meat, they stuffed them down on their throat. The really old newspapers put the theatrical happenings into political connection. They are fighting with wooden sticks. They fixed the properties on their head by tapes. Or they fix the armour sings on one another by glues. Kamilla Fátyol designed the set and the costumes, which are similar to school sport-uniforms. It works with braves imagination than the usual ones.
“Jarry dressed as a clown of circus, everything was affected; mostly his mood of speech, which the Argonauts imitated like on a competition; they divided the phrases sharply, they found out grotesque words, they transformed other expressions, but only Jarry could speak with such a colourless, powerless, stress-less, expressionless voice” - André Gide said it: in his novel of The counterfeiters (Pál Réz translation).
Péter Gál Molnár, Nol.hu, 2009
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)
Ubu was made in a group in the lyceum of Rennes. They figured out angrily their overweight physics teacher with their collected ideas. Jarry and Henri Morin wrote the marionette play, with the help of the older Charles Morin. They performed it in Morins’ attic in 1888, with the title of The Polish. Jarry later appropriated the student trick. He made Ubu individual, he is the coward tyrant, he is the ordinary civilian, who is put between Shakespeare- and Victor Hugo-like didactic scandals.
We do not have to mention all hardships of Jarry’s drama parody. First it was performed Hungarian on the practicing Ódry stage of the theatre art university, in the title role, with the diabolic György Linka and János Bruck directed it (1967). It was swept away by censorship. The director student ends up in London. Béla Éles in Tatabánya together with amateurs, worked it over well, under György Aczél’s protective arms in Pécs he was followed by István Paál in 1987, then Zsámbéki made success of it in Katona in 1984. It was always a political rebellious act against the monotonous made order of performance and ordered common-taste. The opening word of “shit” is calm. It is settled. It is a common treasure of common speech. It does not shock us. It slides by the ears.
There is no scandal. The viewers do not whistle. The viewers’ aesthetic scandal is put off. It is not disturbed by rudeness. The subversive drama-like things calm down into a nice theatrical lamb by Zoltán Balázs’ hands. They do not tease the viewers in order to make them “active”. In contrast to it: the horrifying drama has become an enchanting performance.
After the rude words to the viewers have calmed down, in Jarry remain as much aesthetic widening of viewers, it worth comparing to the 110 hundred years old play, which goes on with naturalistic tools and teases the taste.
It was noted, that when Jarry pushed his finger into the important tragic writer’s hand of the Comédie, he opened his partner as a key, as he was a door, on the premiere Antoine stood up offensively, the god of soil smelled naturalism, and he left the performance in a protesting way.
Ubu on Mikszáth Square is not a political freedom. It is nor the partisan activity against the canonical aesthetic. The informal imagination, the artistic convincing power and the throne reign of the playfulness, which gets rid of its chains.
Four men perform it. Ákos Orosz alone is Papa Ubu, the greedy civilian monster. He does not wear fake stomach. He performed with his own, half naked. With his freely flying fat, with fatty cushions, which are ready to get free. But the form of his eyes, under his half closed lids, looks his dirty attention, with determined coward malice he can stand in for something familiar, something, which is closer to our present days, than to Macbeth by Shakespeare, for Boggerlas’ role Jarry caught a thirteen years old beautiful young boy, with long hair. The figure is performed by Zsolt Páll, together with other eight roles. Sometimes in his mouth we can see frightening false teeth. The others steal sometimes dental-fillers into their mouth to change their face. Captain Bordure and together with other eight separated roles Ádám Tompa shines till the end, who is muscular enlightened from inside. He stole a moustache under his nose. Like light butterflies they are flying with their wings and they express determination, fear, pity heroism under his nose. They live through the childish joke of clowns with shameless seriousness. They are honest, as the school of Rennes before are. They enchant the viewers with easy elegance of artists, with all those things, which professional actors would never do. Zoltán Lendváczky in the transvestite role of Mama Ubu, can put from right and left his black corset under in armpit with a sharp movement. After it he does not want to be womanish neither with thinned voice nor with the fixing of his unrealistic breast. He looks with innocent flirtation, as an ideal Ophelia.
They avoid all artistic traditional clichés. They are childishly happy. And they are entertaining too.
In the corner of the hall there are connected piles of newspapers. There are risen gradually. They are walking on it. There is a deep hole in the middle. Papa Ubu is standing in it. From the newspapers of today they tear down properties for themselves, they eat them as veal meat, they stuffed them down on their throat. The really old newspapers put the theatrical happenings into political connection. They are fighting with wooden sticks. They fixed the properties on their head by tapes. Or they fix the armour sings on one another by glues. Kamilla Fátyol designed the set and the costumes, which are similar to school sport-uniforms. It works with braves imagination than the usual ones.
“Jarry dressed as a clown of circus, everything was affected; mostly his mood of speech, which the Argonauts imitated like on a competition; they divided the phrases sharply, they found out grotesque words, they transformed other expressions, but only Jarry could speak with such a colourless, powerless, stress-less, expressionless voice” - André Gide said it: in his novel of The counterfeiters (Pál Réz translation).
Péter Gál Molnár, Nol.hu, 2009
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)