Zoltán Balázs at the beginning of the performance tells the story of Leonce and Lena. The title characters as unknown people have escaped from the responsibility for each other and the public life, and then later they run into each other’s arm fatedly. Büchner wrote about a two dozen of easy-going scenes, the actors of Maladype have learnt all of them in four different ways, and every evening they play as many of them during the almost three hours long period of them, as the director discusses it with the viewers. It is not a dramatic whole; it is just a mosaic. Ronconi worked out Peer Gynt, Strehler did it with the Faust. Leonce and Lena is a mosaic, expressive play anyway, it is more verbal poetically than full of with actions, and it offers itself for the process.

There are twice four actors in front of each other (between the auditoriums of the viewers), they are lining up well ordered on the flexible carpet, like a stadium, until the director has not called them in for the next action. They use the long bamboo sticks, which are fixed into the two ends of the carpet, as properties, with throwing, closing into cages, with the over fixing of some characters’ arms and legs they make harder the telling of the text for them. Physical theatre requires strong concentration, tempo-rhythm, punctuality and connections with partners. Above all, it requires hard work, leaving the comfortable stereotypes. As the aim is not the imitation of reality, but to create the inner reality under the surface (to make the invisible visible, as Brook said it), the telling of the story is not important (there is not any story), but to show (extend) some parts like an image, which is limited by the actors’ psychophysical abilities. Two of them are getting over a swamp dialogised, while one of them is squirming on the ground, the other one holding the partner and goes around the body many times, without putting a leg on the carpet. If we see two variations of this episode, we can have a tragic and comic version too – it is up to our interpretation. They can humiliate, free up, create a spiritual devotion, build a ship (it can be a mermaid-like symbol of a parody of a cult-film at its bow) with bamboo sticks. They can make fun of mythology of pop-culture (there is a scene entitled Britney, the other one is Mission Impossible), we can feel emotionally verbality (one monologue is on Swedish the other one on Arabic language), we can release rigid self-control with the involvement of viewers (anyone can become Leonce and Lena).

What is this evening in Bárka Theatre about? It cannot be about neither the acrobatic, erotic nor the sport performance; we go to the circus, Moulin Rouge and Sport Arena for them. The content of theatre – the actors’ quality too – can be judged only as the part of the whole performance. The eight of them – Éva Bakos, Hermina Fátyol, Kamilla Fátyol, Katalin Simkó, Ákos Orosz, Zoltán Papp, Zsolt Páll, Ádám Tompa – do not have effect because of their professional performance, not because can “solve” this and that but because of their readiness. They have built worlds from fragments (their own one, and Popo and Pipi’s empire from the empire), which are determined. They themselves are vulnerable – according to the wishes of empire, director and viewers -, and they serve at the same time. They handle it with self-awareness. Impassively. With dignity. They have been soften at the end of the performance. They let two of us from the auditorium to their own empire. They are fragments of the whole too. They are well-prepared too, they must have talked about it with them during the interval. They did not want this meeting too, but it has happened anyway. It is a meeting of loneliness; they do it a little bit hesitantly, embarrassedly, as in case of Büchner. On the other hand, is it only just one more variation? The beauty in it is that it cannot be known.

Tamás Koltai, Élet és Irodalom, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)