In The Tempest, which has been performed in Bárka Theatre there are many things – hardly everything – which we need to not only understand but feel the magnificence, the elevated tragedy of the drama which is actual even today. Zoltán Balázs puts Janácek’s opera, Katya Kabanova into Ostrovsky’s drama; Judit Gombár designed the set for this later one, which is similar to a ramp to a motorway which leads to nowhere. There are holes under it, which make the fast movement possible – the mysterious background curtain which indicates the infinite landscape and the colourful – effective lighting strengthen or counterpoint the waving passions of the performance. The staff who is moved on the rails serves the same play, whose aim is to indicate remarkably the work of reflectors – the formation of the so-called effects.

So, the passions are waving, furthermore by the fault lines of the drama – and the artistic beauty, the directorial imagination try to emphasise it. He shows us and emphasises that Katerina who lives in the tyrant mother-in-law’s monumental dictatorship, thanks to an electric shock like glance she falls in love with Tihon – of course, Kátya Tompos and Zalán Makranczi quote the classical situation of Romeo and Juliette, so that make even stronger the different continuation - ; this passion is more complex than a frantic love, as everything is in it, which has been denied from Katerina: the choice, the freedom, the self-expression, the self-failure. That is why it is not a problem that Tihon by Makranczi returns Kátya Tompos’ deep, more complex flare-up with surface, superficial tools.

From Zoltán Balázs’ direction we do not miss the representations of fate, at least in case of the main characters, but their theatrical formal language is always there in the foreground. Kabanova, who is really powerful – Olga Varjú plays beautifully not only the tyrant mother and mother -in-law, but the woman too who lives a colourful sensual life – her ceremonial dressing on the slowly moving camera car or Éva Bakos, who as Feklusha plays a prophet – clown with broken outlook and exalted soul, they are all so called exclamation marks in the director and actor’s form-language: “Here The Tempest storms!”

The well-formed pictures rhyme many times with the interpretation: Tihon is the runner, but his long, surprising kiss with Katerina’s sister-in-law, with Varvara reflects a sharp strand not only on the man’s character (it is the gesture language of the surface communication not of the disloyalty or cheating), but on the girl too, who has strong erotic experience with someone else. A passionate kiss: it can be nothing and everything. For Katerina it is everything. Kátya Tompos’ suicide is a beautiful stylization, it is heart-breaking anyway: she is sitting in a ball-shape in the middle of the stage.

The side characters bring one-one feature; maybe Artúr Kálid is an exception, who associates a mythical and silly Kuligin with his composed outlook. Balázs Dévai’s Kabanov works not with his weakness but with his reflected acceptance; he tolerates his mother’s tyranny, anyway he knows many things, and he votes to the peace of soul which alcohol can give to him.

The other performance of The Tempest was directed by Viktor Rizsakov with the troupe of the new members from Debrecen and Beregszász – from almost nothing he created an endless wealth. There is not any set – in front of the stage, which is surrounded by white walls, there is low water, there are some doors on the walls and a real door has been made there from another set (with the writing on it: “this is the life of Gypsies”). There is stylization too, the director and the actors’ inner fight for freedom is in connection with the not even smaller bet of theatre making. A wondering troupe arrives with their worn luggage – the luggage will give later possibility for different kind of acrobatic and artistic tricks -, they play the drama and their own fate at the same time. Some costumes have separate “dialogue” with their stressed worn civil clothes, they come in and out between their actor and role life, they speak out, they comment on, they play. They put tragedy into commedia dell'arte, sometimes they help themselves and each other over hard times with farce like drives. There are some “objective” ones between them: the performance of the group is uneven. So many of them are involved in the tragic ending of the youngster’s love; they stress that the young – and really immature – Katya (Eszter Anna Szabó) needs help for her own death too: Boris, her love whispers her what to tell. There are many divine moments, perfect solutions, deep scenes – Tihon is an overgrown child there, who as his mother’s little child accepts to wash him, dry him, cut his nails. Nelli Szűcs’ Kabanova grows above everybody, it is all right: an everyday tyrant, she can rule and destroy with one glance, she does not need the divas’ attributes, not even an emphasized moment, not a composed situation, as herself is enough for monumentality. Zsolt Trill plays Kuligin the dreamer – inventor, he is a great clown. Rizsakov leads the players with ordered extravagance towards the shocking final – and of course, it is thought well too – they are standing in front of us, we are looking at each other, and a stray toy bear is given from hand to hand.

(Zsámbék, 31st Augustus, Bárka, 9th September)

Judit Csáki, Magyar Narancs, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)