Noémi Sümegi: His wife cheated him so he has found out a cruel revenge
On the coast of Lake Bánki, the METTRIN Arts Centre can be found in a wonderful surrounding: here they performed The Suit by Can Themba, put on stage by Zoltán Balázs. The composer of the Hungarian premiere is Adrián Kovács, the performers are: Barna Kelemen Bányai, Csilla Radnay and Ferenc Fehér. The story is a cruel one, however the music, the movements are shockingly beautiful, all wrapped in the jewellery box of the set.
This new musical work, which blends elements of jazz with classical opera traditions and is based on an adaptation of a short story by one of world literature's best-known South African author (Mothobi Mutloatse) and on a libretto (Zoltán Balázs), and it is a collaboration between METTRIN and Maladype and will serve as the opening performance of the Louis Armstrong International Jazz Festival.
Director Zoltán Balázs, following in the footsteps of Peter Brook—who was the first to stage Themba’s masterpiece in Europe—promises a gradually unfolding, associative performance that defends the order of the irrational universe through the power of humour and the absurd, and watching the premiere of The Suit, he has managed to fulfil it.
Cruel game
The story of The Suit is set in Sophiatown, a neighbourhood in Johannesburg that was destroyed by the apartheid regime in the 1950s. It is hard to explain how, but from the tiny elements of set, the patterns of costume (costume designer: Daniella Sovány), the smoky saxophone music, we can find out, that we are not in Europe. All of it is strengthened by the fact, that the characters speak and sing in English, and sometimes we can hear some sentences from them even in Zulu language.
The main character of the story is Philemon, (Barna Kelemen Bányai) the dutiful husband who catches his wife with a young man. Instead of confrontation and separation, he forces Matilda (Csilla Radnay) to treat the suit left behind by her lover (Ferenc Fehér) as a guest of honour: feed it, talk to it, lay in bed in the evenings. He cannot put aside this “game” even when they have company, and while the others detect it as a funny whim in the life of the couple, they are slowly being ruined by it.
The prison of revenge
According to the director’s idea, the powerful and tragic story deals with the topics of love, betrayal, revenge, dignity and oppression. It reveals the psychological effects of a system, which refuses the humanity and freedom from its members. The actuality of the play, which is full of surrealistic elements, are given by the domestic violence and social division.
Composer, Adrián Kovács blends Afro-jazz rhythms of marabi, mbaganga, and kwela with European and Hungarian sounds, which support that disharmonious world, which the director and author have dreamt about. Philemon is a musician himself too, and once his wife has musical ambitious, but somehow it has been pushed into the background in her life – maybe this is the reason why she was looking for other excitements.
Barna Kelemen Bányai’s sad, cheated saxophone player, closes himself into the devilish helmet of his own revenge – the cage is expressed by the compact set too, which has more functions, as we have got used to it in Zoltán Balázs’ performances. The once wonderful singer, who is performed by Csilla Radnay get more and more powerless, as the weight of revenge is pulling her down. There is no chance for forgiveness and reconciliation, the two actors’ singing can express shockingly the wild power of emotions in the deep.
Live music
The Suit is the gem of South African literature, which has been translated into several languages and adapted in various forms, including an adaptation by Mothobi Mutloatse and Barney Simon at the legendary Market Theatre in Johannesburg in 1994, and later in 2004 at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, in a French translation by Peter Brook, Marie-Hélène Estienne, and Franck Krawczyk. The dramaturg of the Hungarian performance is Zsolt Lukács.
The music in The Suit is not the background but it is a live material. The musicians: piano András Szép, percussion instruments Benedek Kárpáti, guitar Szabolcs Dörnyei and Balázs Rodek, saxophone and flute Balázs Rabóczki and Zsolt Magda, bass Tamás Gyányi. Following its premiere in Bánk at the end of June, this multidisciplinary production will also be presented in Gyula at the World Literature Classics Festival and in Budapest as part of the Városmajor Open-air Theatre, Szemle Plusz competition program.
Noémi Sümegi, Index, 2026
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)
This new musical work, which blends elements of jazz with classical opera traditions and is based on an adaptation of a short story by one of world literature's best-known South African author (Mothobi Mutloatse) and on a libretto (Zoltán Balázs), and it is a collaboration between METTRIN and Maladype and will serve as the opening performance of the Louis Armstrong International Jazz Festival.
Director Zoltán Balázs, following in the footsteps of Peter Brook—who was the first to stage Themba’s masterpiece in Europe—promises a gradually unfolding, associative performance that defends the order of the irrational universe through the power of humour and the absurd, and watching the premiere of The Suit, he has managed to fulfil it.
Cruel game
The story of The Suit is set in Sophiatown, a neighbourhood in Johannesburg that was destroyed by the apartheid regime in the 1950s. It is hard to explain how, but from the tiny elements of set, the patterns of costume (costume designer: Daniella Sovány), the smoky saxophone music, we can find out, that we are not in Europe. All of it is strengthened by the fact, that the characters speak and sing in English, and sometimes we can hear some sentences from them even in Zulu language.
The main character of the story is Philemon, (Barna Kelemen Bányai) the dutiful husband who catches his wife with a young man. Instead of confrontation and separation, he forces Matilda (Csilla Radnay) to treat the suit left behind by her lover (Ferenc Fehér) as a guest of honour: feed it, talk to it, lay in bed in the evenings. He cannot put aside this “game” even when they have company, and while the others detect it as a funny whim in the life of the couple, they are slowly being ruined by it.
The prison of revenge
According to the director’s idea, the powerful and tragic story deals with the topics of love, betrayal, revenge, dignity and oppression. It reveals the psychological effects of a system, which refuses the humanity and freedom from its members. The actuality of the play, which is full of surrealistic elements, are given by the domestic violence and social division.
Composer, Adrián Kovács blends Afro-jazz rhythms of marabi, mbaganga, and kwela with European and Hungarian sounds, which support that disharmonious world, which the director and author have dreamt about. Philemon is a musician himself too, and once his wife has musical ambitious, but somehow it has been pushed into the background in her life – maybe this is the reason why she was looking for other excitements.
Barna Kelemen Bányai’s sad, cheated saxophone player, closes himself into the devilish helmet of his own revenge – the cage is expressed by the compact set too, which has more functions, as we have got used to it in Zoltán Balázs’ performances. The once wonderful singer, who is performed by Csilla Radnay get more and more powerless, as the weight of revenge is pulling her down. There is no chance for forgiveness and reconciliation, the two actors’ singing can express shockingly the wild power of emotions in the deep.
Live music
The Suit is the gem of South African literature, which has been translated into several languages and adapted in various forms, including an adaptation by Mothobi Mutloatse and Barney Simon at the legendary Market Theatre in Johannesburg in 1994, and later in 2004 at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, in a French translation by Peter Brook, Marie-Hélène Estienne, and Franck Krawczyk. The dramaturg of the Hungarian performance is Zsolt Lukács.
The music in The Suit is not the background but it is a live material. The musicians: piano András Szép, percussion instruments Benedek Kárpáti, guitar Szabolcs Dörnyei and Balázs Rodek, saxophone and flute Balázs Rabóczki and Zsolt Magda, bass Tamás Gyányi. Following its premiere in Bánk at the end of June, this multidisciplinary production will also be presented in Gyula at the World Literature Classics Festival and in Budapest as part of the Városmajor Open-air Theatre, Szemle Plusz competition program.
Noémi Sümegi, Index, 2026
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)