The master’s, who died young, second – from the finished ones the last one – drama according to Zoltán Balázs’ words is about theatre making. We do not argue with him, as the performance of Maladype is really about this, it talks about theatre(making). And do not with only a few words.

The area of the performance, which was designed by Judit Gombár, is a white tatami rectangle (a so called mattress, from which many bamboo sticks come out: the actors are standing between them in statue-like silence, in a black uniform, in the middle there is Kornél Mogyoró with his percussion instruments. But before they “can” move, Zoltán Balázs grabs the word and makes the situation clear. The performance consists of twenty-five scenes, which (for a while) the troupe has learnt in four different versions: with four types of dictions, with four types of music and movement, and above all with four possible Leonces, Lenas and their companions. Nobody knows in advance that which chain of scenes will take place on the tatami each evening. Nobody, as during the performance sometimes the director indicates that what and who has to play; sometimes the actors can choose; and sometimes the viewers can do it. But it is not the end. Balázs encourage the audience: would they watch a scene again, but with different Lena and Leonce, with different tone, or even in different language. So that way the whole picture of the performance that evening depends on the viewers’ enthusiasm, openness and mood, and the time of ending depends on it too.

Maladype leaves the everyday linearity from every point of view, and puts theatre into more dimensions than usual both literally and metaphorically – Zoltán Balázs uses very well, mixes, widens and forms his earlier well-known masters’ catches into his own images. However, the scenes – supported the story for sure in a sort way, by the guiding director’s verbal crutch – follow each other logically in time and the short intervals between them (a momentary silence, while the troupe gets ready again). Because of the accidental repetition and the always-changing performing style, we cannot see it a unity, which is chained onto one line. Anyway, there is not any structure of “actor comes from the left – dialogue – the actor leaves on the right”: exactly the actors, who play the main roles – and their helpers, who are managing the bamboo sticks – always perform a scene, which was made with a unique, perfectly valid ideas on their own, by a given (mostly built on intensive moving theatre) ideas by the director. The moving is emphatically spatial: sometimes the actors’ exercise are wantonly acrobatic: in one of the possible ending scenes, titled The Giant, for example the four female actors are standing on the male actors’ shoulders, but anyway, it is rare when all the performers’ feet are on the ground at the same time.

These scenes are very colourful: we can feel exponentially the experience of the once in a lifetime, of the unrepeatability – it can be counted, that how many evenings can be born if we chain one after another from the hundred ones, in random number and form. This is the paradox of apparently improvisation, which is put between the strictest borders: its special nature is given, the negatively accepted eventuality of improvisation is excluded, as all segments are worked out up until the last parts of them. Eventuality is there only in case of the random order of the scenes: the performance on 21st May started seemingly in an unlucky way, because the second scene was still un-understandably surprising with its unusual form, with seemingly weird silly pop songs (Ákos Orosz performed them); then after it came a dialogue in partly German language, in that way the whole impression has not been improved. It is true that it was suddenly followed, according to the director’s order, by its Hungarian pair – here we can fell the existing order of this. It must have been luckier, it the German scene had come later, that way we could appreciate well the wonderful pictures: Éva Bakos gets dressed Leone (Zoltán Papp), who is crawling on the ground, while she is repeating with calming voice her calming words.

Meanwhile the performance becomes extremely good not because of the words, in contrast with it: Maladype is talking mainly not with words now. With body and bodies; with the help of the stresses, faces, shouts and questions hidden in the permanent moving: Éva Bakos’ monologue, told in sign language or Hermina Fátyol’s, who tells it in Arabic language are characteristic with their despair, they can express. These “flowing” cannot stop at the edge of the stage: especially the great monologue which is told and performed by all the eight actors at the same time, cannot remain on the tatami – the tension fires up, its effect is greater than of a real explosion. More than the greatest amount of those plays that were put on stage last year.

We can list the excellently made scenes for long: wonderful for example as Kamilla Fátyol rocks Katalin Simkó, who is about to be forced to get married, red because of the heat and shaking because of her inner coldness in the cradle made of her own body. The meeting of the Fátyol sisters – as missing nymphs – with Ádám Tompa and Zsolt Páll’s Leonce and Valerio, who are travelling by a boat is similarly beautiful.

I do not know when I saw such a directly, strongly effective performance last time. I do know whether I have seen any time.

Bálint Kovács, Magyar Narancs, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)