During the performance of The Tempest by Ostrovsky a panorama set lays in the Bárka Theatre. It fills the long wall. The set has a set-like feeling, it is made of painted wings, the background shows a landscape, the terrain and the sky, to the front side of it they have connected a diagonally rising upside slope as a dominant walking area, under its upside part three “doors” have been cut in it for the moving underside. Judit Gombár has designed a stage, which had been made for operas once, but while in the huge palace of music we can watch the sight, which no matter how stylised it is, wants to reach (fake)realistic effect, from a discrete distance, here we are sitting in it, like in an art studio. It is exactly about it. It is about a set of an art studio. To make undoubtable the crying intentionality, the director, Zoltán Balázs brings in the camera cars, running on rails, which are used during film shooting, on them they have prepared not cameras but lighting machines this time, and not cameramen are travelling on them, but the lighting technicians. The scene-shifters are pushing them on back and forward during the scenes, then they follow the characters with the circles of lights of their lamps, or cross their way, depends on how the director wants it. Sometimes he makes the characters stand on the car, for example they push in Kabanova and pull out Kabanov on it; the first one’s make-up is decorated on it, while the second one goes to trade with silk on it. There is a crane too, which goes around and raise, the reflector on the crane projects a moon to the background horizon.

It is a pure pseudo shooting in any film studio.

And it is a pure opera. They seem to be shooting an opera film. From time to time we can hear the opera, Katya Kabanova which was written from The Tempest by Leoą Janáček, who is the Czech composer genius. Sometimes we can hear it parallel with the played scene. The Czech singers are singing in Czech language those things which are said in Hungarian language by the Hungarian actors. At the same time or almost at the same time. (Do not have to get afraid: there is not any playback “dubbing”.) The postponed dubbing is composed beautifully, musically, in a good tempo-rhythm. Some short prosaic sentences are usually said during the intervals of vocal parts, for example in the final of the first part, they use the momentary break of the vocal part to say “good night”. They do not have to speak during the “quartet”. To complete the musical representation of the dramatic situation it is enough if Varvara and Kudriash, the lovers who do not care about the prohibitions, try to separate the tragic lovers, Katerina and Tihon, who hug each other in the euphoria of their coming together.

Oh, I have hardly forgotten: the drama is about the fact that Katerina and Tihon fell in love with each other, but the young woman’s mother-in-law, the tyrant Kabanova, who keeps her own son under her power, finds out the affair, and as there is not any way out, Katerina will commit suicide.

Ostrovsky’s play is one of the emblematic masterpieces of drama literature. I say it only because may not be known by everybody. Meanwhile we are in Hungary. In the encyclopedic article of our theatre history, according to Andor Pünkösti and Aurél Kárpáti Ostrovsky could not write good dramas. It is undecided whether they thought it this way, or they would have liked to hit on the “right sided” Antal Németh when he put it on program in the National Theatre. Any version can be true, it is even worse for them. As I have said, we are in Hungary. If the drama is strong on its own, whether the showing of the artistic side of theatre serves any more besides the emphasising of the director’s artistic nature? When I ask it, I remember the fashionable clown of my childhood, who cried the narcissistic phrase before his big trick “Akrobat, óh!”. Is there only a cry or a trick too?

I think that The Tempest is a progress in Zoltán Balázs’ career. Instead of a pattern it is a dramatic composition. Instead of a style embroidery it is an experiment to grab human fates. The picturesque and artistic stylization is there to avoid conventions. There is not any place for naturalistic “drama playing”, the psychological playing is overwritten by the gesture language and the choreography, however according to the signs it does not become part of actors. Ádám Tompa, who plays Kudriash parallel to his verbal sayings he jumps and stamps: it is unknown who he is really, but without any questions he is a “figure”. Róbert Kardos is shouting as Dikov, and points his gun on everybody, it almost forms his character. Artúr Kálid is the handyman, as the odd Kuligin with his red umbrella (maybe because he is doing experiments with a lighting rod?) he is similar to a samurai in Mao-coat and an intellectual raisonneur. Once Balázs Dévai who is hanging upside down from his neck, as Kabanov he tells his resume this way: the goodbye from his wife which includes the sarcastic rebellion is even stronger from it, when he repeats it watching his mother and turns back her tyrannical instructions. Olga Varjú’s Kabanova who is peacocking with filled mink instead of a mink collar, can show like an icon and at the same time with inner shading the female great woman – she is not an iron-nosed witch, but a despot who enjoys her life, who does not apply her scruples on herself.

Tihon, Zalán Makranczi from the performance does not live through the love from inside, instead of it he is like a bon vivant, elegant, fine and a nice stranger, but we can have uncertain ideas about his feelings and his honesty. Mostly because suddenly he meets in a kiss with Katerina’s younger sister, with Varvara, played by Kamilla Fátyol. This moment is undue psychologically is not surprising because it does not have any understandable reasons, it comes mostly from the tactile relationship, that the characters get in connection not in a psychological way but with physical touches, they grab, hug and raise the other one, hide under each other’s dresses, for example once Tihon goes down the slope while he is holding Katerina who is standing on his shoes. The kiss is this kind of chance, the result of touch without any consequences. Éva Bakos brings these physical things to the top, who creates from Feklusha, the pilgrim woman an old goblin, a wizened medicine woman with dishevelled, grey hair, she is like an omniscient of love, who dances with a jump rope and whip the mystery of sexuality; she is an effective figure, it is a shame that with her speech she ruins the power of her presence. Katya Tompos uses the psychological tools – gently hidden – in the role of Katerina, simply and in an inspired way, without any melodramatic connotation, she dematerializes from inside. As in case of her final good bye – after the insensitive leaving of her lover – she watches in the distance, into the nothing, her left hand remains upside in the air, then she has already been on the other side, before following the director’s instructions, she climbs down on the cramp irons on the wall, after it she would die standing on her way. It is an important artistic achievement. Katya Tompos would have been known to be a great promise only by those who has not minded going to the Attila József Theatre, so it is a miracle that she has been found.

The performance has much virtue, it must be the result of artistic imagination. I have a sense of lack because of the fading of dramatic thought. It is a characteristic moment when Olga Varjú as Kabanova shouts at the moment of finding out the forbidden love: “That is where freedom can lead!” For this moment the audience should start laughing, the drama is about the killing of freedom, for which Kabanova can be the emblem -, but the audience remains silent, do not feel to be accepted. Dobrolyubov said that Katerina is sunlight in the empire of darkness. The later one is around us, just theatre does not want to recognise it. There are many artificial lights during the performance, there is flaming in it too, but the drama is a protest against the demolition of human’s natural rights – the most important thing in the drama – which die out on the altar elevated for beauty.

Tamás Koltai, Élet és Irodalom, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)