There are artistic studies that are walking, they are well grown, well moved, they live and perform on a billiard table, we can mean it by words, or they are just pushing the balls, in the Platonov by Maladype Theatre. Why is there a billiard table in the middle of the space? It is much easier to answer to it, that to the question that what makes this performance move. However, seemingly something makes the actors perform very much, who try to move everything. But to where?

Nikolai Ivanovich Triletsky is waiting there, pushing the balls, for everybody to get their seats around the stage on the auditorium, then the real game can begin. The others join in the happenings gradually from the auditorium, and they begin new matches on the table and between each other. The whole cavalcade of one night, and the happenings of the other day go on here, this tiny part of the performing space is Anna Petrovna Voynitseva’s house, this is the garden, the living room, the bedroom, it is everything. Platonov’s provoked arguments appear here, he gets all the women’s heart, who live in the house here, Sergei Pavlovich Voynitsev has to grow up here, and here Isaac Abramovich Vengerovich falls out with his father, Abram and later he makes up with him here. However, these never-ending counting, games of roles, seductions, intrigues, tricks, complexes cannot get on surface with their admiring horrifying nature, they are just rolling on and on the stage.

However, the actors can seemingly and feelingly exist in their roles very deeply, surrounding with sure holdings. The dynamic, sometimes little bit exaggerated, abrupt beginning is later explained by all performances and continuously cleaning it down. From Ákos Orosz’s mouth, movements and looks Platonov’s all speech can be understood by words, there are not any letters in Chekov’s play, which cannot be found in this performance. In Orosz’s performance, Platonov is passionate, short-tempered, calculative and fallen at the same time, he falls in love honestly with all women, he can confess love from his heart, it is another question that he means sex by love. Anyway, he knows himself punctually too, he knows accurately what and when will happen, and what he will do with the women. Zoltán Lendváczky as Sergei performs a complex growing into mature, he turns the initial naïve, childishly playful and energic gestures from one moment to the other, with perfect dramaturgical feeling he can turn into a grown-up empty, disappointed man’s view of life, who is laying under the failure. In his performance the most descriptive one, as the initial naughty man, makes disappear the always witty elements of humour and plays from the figure, and from one moment to the other only disappointment remains in his place.

Zénó Faragó really purely and only with a few gestures opens Isaac’s figure; his light stresses are so expressive, when we are talking about a moral crusader, and a cruel rich one, who is drunken with power. Judit Kovács Ligeti’ Anna is full of suppressed feelings, desires, but she is a ruling woman. Erika Tankó’s Sasha shows the real understanding and loving wife, she is the real pair for life, walking on two legs, who cannot bear only the humiliation. While Anna’s gestures are exploding, when she is alone with Platonov, Sasha is calm and balanced all through the performance, in contrast with Kamilla Fátyol’s Sofia, who is stressed when she sees the man. While Fátyol’s performance seems to be very rigid at the beginning, but when she shows her inside along with the patterns of her character, with her almost imagined feelings, she can make all her wanderings justified. Vica Kerekes’ Maria is balancing between the passion and rigidness, the actress can change almost suddenly after the total madness and crying into the insensitivity, which is forced between strict rules. She can play with her role as much as with Platonov. Ádám Tompa gets only a time of a scene to open Nikolai, as the second one he almost spends sitting on a chair, but he can do it during that time, and he shows the still immature man, who tells deadly serious jokes. Zsolt Páll’s Abram is the pure official and reserved one, he shares his conservative ideas, but in reality the same kind of calculation and pettiness is hidden behind him, as in the case of his son.

The billiard table is a good idea, it can express well that play, which pushes them back and forth, which is going on the stage, but as it can do it at the first moment, it can do it in the last one too. There is not any change between the two. The only thing is, that sometimes the balls become skulls, moneys, then roses – it can be told endlessly, as this little table can mean everything. But this endless line will end anyway, even before it can become exciting, as ideas come only sometimes, but on one hand they cannot make the performance varied, and on the other hand, because of their minimal character, they are accidental and unorganised. Bea Molnár paints the billiard table the same black and beige, as the styled modern costumes too, and this colourlessness cannot make us forget the colourlessness in its figurative sense – however it is not its work anyway.

Anyway the performance should be made exciting not by the vision, but by those kind of organising expressing elements and ingenious concentration, which Zoltán Balázs, the director would avoid with pleasure. With Judit Góczán dramaturg, put Platonov on stage, with its untouched whole nature. However, all relationships are interpreted on their own from every points of view, but because of this impatience they are not interpreted from one point of view, which would make justified, understandable and clear the others. The actors’ energetic works, Platonov’s kisses with all the women are for nothing, he wallows on the billiard table and comes up with the possibility of homosexuality for nothing too. The drama books, walking on two legs are vivid, but they are so confident and too casual that they are too far away from the viewers in spite of their all physical closeness. The courtship, meanness, kissing is just going on endlessly – but we do not know why?

Attila Nyulassy, 7óra7, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)