There are colours, numbers and sixteen version of the perfect geometrical form of the ball: the billiard table, the balls, the game itself keep a definite symbolism, which is variable by content but is not defined from closer point of view. In the Arizona Studio of the Thália Theatre, the billiard table can stand massively, up until it can handle the changing of functions, meaning. The three and half hours are long for it too.

The newest choice of Maladype Theatre is Anton Pavlov Chekov’s first started play (even before he became twenty years old), but he could not finish it, and it did not get a final title, it was thought to be lost for a long time, however it can give the joy of free reconstruction to the director. Zoltán Balázs has made a version, which concentrates on viable, lost young – or that have become young – figures (dramaturg: Judit Góczán) As two of the characters have a name Vengerovich (“Hungarian”), than he makes the play, which has a usual meaning into a little bit Hungarian, however neither the application of the poem, Black country by Babits, who was almost the peer of Chekov, and he quotes it as “The country of the black ball”, nor the local understandable quotation of The Elf of Today in Thália (and it can be decoded from the point of view of Chekov’s The Elf) is not the most successful one. The text has to be connected to the incidental happenings of the billiard game, which can be regular or irregular, it can be played well or not. The uncountable rolling of the balls can be corrected with good words, with appropriate improvisations, anyway especially at the beginning, the changing excitement of the games and accidental joyfulness can come through the replica. The table (above it the lights of the source of light make us remember the Fibonacci-line – on the long sides there are twenty-one, on the short ones thirteen bulbs) with the surrounding parts: it is the field of war, the boxing ring, where the fights of the characters with each other, and mainly those characters’ fights, who cannot get on well with the main character are expressed (the set and costume are designed by Bea Molnár).

The playground can be anything, from the table of eating until the bed of love affairs. As well as the cue (if we need it is an armour), the chalk (once a box of matches), any of the balls (coins, letter, in a doubled way, glasses), the group of the balls (firework), the clothes, the six pockets, all successful and failed pushes, crashes, and the placement of balls become symbolic. We can hear the question more: “What is your plan?”, and the asked one, tries to avoid the traps, the misconception, the disappointments of fate, the pressure of the undecided ability, with Chekov-like humour he could answer: the purple full four into the left corner, the yellow striped nine into the middle one. And then they would go in or not. The balls crash, lives fail, which are unplanned, planed badly, based on lies, and went into smoke. It can be felt, that the initial joviality can become harsh sooner or later, those who cannot find their happiness and place, can lose their temper.
After the long winter, still in the colours of coldness, freeze – in the white, grey, black and brown dresses – the almost equal (antique)heroes get together. Platonov, who tells himself now to be twenty-five, and becomes a teacher in a village, after leaves his university studies in half, he is the “Don Juan and hero of slippers, who winds all women in his surrounding (in this version his wife, and three others) around his finger. He promises them, he cares them, he humiliates them, he chases them into extasy or death, without any real aims or desire. Platonov gets into the focuses of the men’s (their number is four now) aims, attacks and protections. From the eternal conflicts, the finally unbeatable remorse, the silly view of existence he escapes into suicide. All still alive figures have a reason, to point a cue to the Platonov’s body, who is standing on the table (one as a gun, to his forehead). It is a wonderful moment: the suicide happens as a murder.

It is not great at all, that the strange human sculpture has to be demolished, the keeping cues must be left so the dead one can collapse between the balls, and sentences can be told above him in the darkness. The table, as the time is going on, is not a playmate anymore, it is not a symbolic tool, which divides the space, it is a giant barrier instead. The balancing on its edge and the tricks are artificial. The replacement, the losing of the structure of signs are problems too. If the often, drunken state is enough to be express by words without drinking, leaning on the clothes and signing by it, a suddenly appearing sounds of a harmonica can expressly partly the image of drinking wine. It is possible, that a much shorter, more economical drama text can bring our attention less from the unruled heaviness of the central object, which is well found.

The actors are devoted partners of the director, who has done thorough analyzation, who wants a lot, by the premiere he is not ready with the interpretation, but he is indulgent with the text. However, their performance still has changing intensity, and can be seen partly. Sometimes emptiness reigns the space. Isaac Abramovich’ look is not shining at the moment. Sofia Yegorovna is not lazy or prink at the moment, they tell it for nothing. Those many forced movements, the deliberately pale using of space, which is sometimes overchoreographed, make the performers (in their passive moments they are sitting in the first line next to the viewers) do punishing circles.

The female choir’s performance is more balanced than the men’s, Judit Kovács Ligeti has no nuances, she repeats grindingly stressed the widow’s words, Voynitseva’s words, who is stubborn but cannot get right to her wants as well as the others. Erika Tank ó can express vividly, airily Sasha’s fatal mental breakdown, because of the emotional failure and cheating. Kamilla Fátyol’s Sofia by the price of self-cheating can believably get back her common past with Platonov. Vica Kerekes, the guest performer, characterises Maria with reticent exaltation, which is raised by perplexity. Zsolt Páll’ (Vengerovich) knocking speech, his dryness is not always enough for the Jewish businessman’s self-confidence, which is unshakable for a while, and weaken by sorrow. Ádám Tompa over heated nature is not the best for doctor Triletsky’s character, who is always ruined by another loan. Zénó Faragó’s less divided performance does not show us, why Isaac, who sponges on his hated father, arrives and leaves that way, as he does, and Zoltán Lendváczky’s Sergei becomes pale from time to time.

Ákos Orosz’s teenager like, naughty Platonov can play from his guts his mental, oiled by cynicism. From time to time, in spite of his reckless nature, his flowing self-sabotage, his asocial and immoral work, which can ruin others’ future, we can see Platonov’s relative extraordinary nature, his tragic ego, which points also towards Ivanov’s main character. In its parts for the loss of humans, which has not been reasoned fully by Chekov too, he can offer an excuse from one hand with the clowning tricks, which influences his surroundings too, on the other hand with his bitterness of his sparkling reasoning power from his lost near past. Orosz is suitable to get the other eight characters around him, and keeps them in continuous excitement, opposition, in attraction and repulsion.

The friendly and refined try of the Maladype – similarly to most of the performances of the troupe – can become better thanks for continuous work, staging and artistic self-critic.

Tamás Tarján, Kultúra.hu, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)