In everyday life it can be called a „training”. In case of luckier workplaces, it lasts for many days in a cold conference room of a nice hotel, where the well-prepared (mostly appreciated) people give more and more useful information to participants, from which the nice listeners would apply many ideas and techniques in their everyday work too. In case of theatre we call this mechanism a „workshop”. The two things differ from each other because there is a real interaction between the listeners and interpreters, and that moves the whole course. But course remains course that way too, and nothing guarantees that from the point of view of its usefulness its better than its sibling.

The starting point of the common work is Woyzeck by Büchner (a fragment of a drama), it is about a simple soldier’ constrained fight for a fair life, who has been humiliated by society and he is exposed to it. His fight ends in an unworthy death. It is no use to tell more words about it, as Claudio Collovà, the director does not spend time with the reasons, he concentrates on the parts which are grabbed form the context, that way he gets the well followable dramaturgy from his drama, and so that it can appear as a well-prepared whole on the stage. The performance which is made that way is an abstract, free and indirect play about the topic by Woyzeck, the scenes of which are reflected on feelings, lines of actions or systems of relations. The performance does not explain, does not paint, just shows, without any preludes and consequences.

It leaves alone the viewers who do not know the lines of the drama from the first moment, but it is in connection with reality anyway, the drama does the same with itself too, as it subordinates the whole night to one saint aim; to the form. From this comes the fact that the what and why get much smaller stress than the how. Collovà’s effective, but mostly fatally long-winded scenes appear as exciting professional experiments on their own, as inner dialogue by the author-performer, from which the viewers who are sitting in the auditorium are almost totally excluded. We can feel that four men and women (who are mostly in the roles of Woyzeck and Mary) with extreme physical and mental effort by the side of a stylized lake, with the help of some plates and jars, without any try to save themselves, try to interpret these two characters and their relationships in a new language. The only problem is, that verbs are missing from this language, it consists of only attributes and adjectives, from it the contours of the eternal frustration of a soul of a naïve servile soul and a subordinate, silently accepted presence of a woman can be drawn, but their presence remains perfectly self-serving.

The troupe of Maladype has made a hard and determined work, which has a useful result anyway, even if we cannot talk about a coherent performance. It comes up again that Ákos Orosz (whose appearance in the drama is very similar to the illustrations of Švejk by Josef Lada) has a potential which is hard not to be noticed, and that the troupe, led by Zoltán Balázs still goes on the way of formalist theatre making. It is an evidently useful ambition but from some point of view it is understandable if the reaction of the audience is not the pulsing gratitude but a sleepy applause.

Balázs Zsedényi, szinhazajanlo.hu, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)