Bright reflectors are lighting into the actors’ faces. The light follows them many times, gets into their eyes, even into their wrinkles, does not leave them alone, it emphasises and highlights their reactions. It enlarges the lies and the honesty too. Let us see their inside. The actors’ and their characters’ small gestures are shown to us. However basically they are playing realistically but they will have demonstrative effect. The light alienates us from them but brings us closer to them too. To some parts of the stage rails are put, the technicians who handle the reflectors are pushed on them to be able to give the light from the most appropriate point. The lighting technicians and those who move the cars are not just background workers now, but they are parts of the performance, their coming and leaving become the parts of sight, maybe it is less important from that one of them even eats a chewing gum.

It does not fit into that picturesque composition which Zoltán Balázs, the director has formed to the performance of The Tempest by Ostrovsky. In case of Balázs, lighting always has an emphasised role, during The Blacks, Empedocles and Theomachia he would have liked to celebrate a mass with its help. Meanwhile during these undoubtedly talented performances by him I felt some kind of contrivance, and that the actors are not independent creators for sure but they just carried out the director’s conception.

As in case of The Tempest the natural balance has been found, the determined idea is hardly touchable, and the characters are not dancing tied up. Kátya Tompos, for example is excellent as Katerina. She is a clean, clever woman who does not want to follow any social conventions which are forced on her, she stands against her mother-in-law tyranny, she can hardly handle her husband’s uncertainty that turns into over shy nature, she goes confidently towards suicide instead of goes on living like this. And how dramatic it is, and even – have to be said – how beautiful this suicide is. Katerina starts climbing down slowly from the top of the set which is designed by Judit Gombár and forms a half-broken bridge which is going upside. She does not jump or fall into the deep, just climbs down and meanwhile she is singing with tormenting pain from the opera, Katja Kabanova by Janácek. The motives of this opera can be heard other times too, and they form a harmonic unity with the prose.

The view, the acoustic effect and the play come together in a rare way. However, the play is not always elemental, its overall effect is powerful. Katerina shows her husband, Balázs Dévai, as this man is unable to get independent from the effect of his mother, he knows how unfair this strictly strong woman with his wife, but he does not dare to stand against her. Olga Varjú gives, with straight waist, strutting walking and with hypocritical audacity which sometimes turns into infamy, the mother who sticks to old moralities. Zalán Makranczi’s Boris is however in love with Katerina, cannot rebel against the conventions. Artúr Kálid’s inventor shows himself little bit narrow-minded, but many times he can see clearly. As the whole performance has enlightening power. The moving reflectors lighten a hypocritical society where lie and cruel hypocrisy are the rulers.

Gábor Bóta, Magyar Hírlap, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)