The first performance of Maladype Theatre in this term is the Platonov, Chekov’s strange play.

This play by Chekov is not performed too often. It is not accidental. It is an early performance, he wrote it at around his age of twenty. It is a play, which appeared just long after the writer’s death. After knowing the later great dramas, from their points of view backward, it is that kind of play, which would give some kind of mixture of Chekov’s all plays. There are many conflicts, many problems waiting for solutions, many sentences, many different life situations and many ways of life can be familiar for those, who knows Chekov’s plays. The main motifs of Platonov are the relationship between father and son, the helplessness, the desperation, the desire for cleverer, harder life, the desire to go away, the falling into the dust of countryside, the losing of property, the losing of a life style, the way as it becomes empty. Later they get into the great plays of world literature, as the basis of them in a cleverer form, as they are opened, divided, separated. (The Seagull, The Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard)

As we are entering the Arizona Studio of Thália Theatre, we arrive into a black and white space. The stage, which is covered by white wooden floor, is surrounded by black podiums on its four sides, we, the viewers can sit on them. In the middle of the white wooden floor there is a huge billiard table, covered with black and white, with colourful balls. There is a continuous billiard game here. As the colourful balls on the table do according to the physical rules: by the pushing of the cue they go around, circle, crash to one another, leave each other, they push each other on, they hit the edge of the table, they bounce from there, sometimes they fall into the net and that way the human billiard game is going on in the space around the table, similarly to it on a bigger billiard table outside. The characters, who are dressed mostly in black and white costumes, sometimes crashed to each other, leave each other, come closer and further to one another, they change places and knock each other out.

The dramatic situation is familiar. There are nine characters, nine people, men and women, about who we do not know precisely where they come from, and where they go on. They live, exit and they are here. They do not have a real past and a real future. Their life is a big billiard game. They get next to each other somehow, they live next to each other, and they get married and divorced. Everybody cheats, everybody does it, and everybody is cheated. Everybody desires something else and everybody wants someone else. All the women wish for Platonov, for the twenty-five years old teacher in the countryside. They love and hate each other. There is not any real love, there is not any real friendship, there is not any real father-son relationship, and there is not any real life.

In Zoltán Balázs’ staging that way the billiard table becomes the symbol of the nine characters’ life and their place in reality too. Sometimes it is a dining table, sometimes it is the place of secret or not so secret love affairs, and finally the place of the main character’s death. The play has not got any hero, there is not any main characters. These characters, figure are not heroes. They are performers. We cannot love or hate them in reality, not even feel sorry for them.

The troupe of Maladype now gets bigger with some new actors. In the role of the widow wife of the general, of Anna Petrovna, we can see Judit Kovács Ligeti, who makes us remember the young Juli Básti. In the role of Grekova, we can see Vica Kerekes, and Erika Tankó in the role of Alexandra Ivanovna, the many times cheated wife of Platonov. Kamilla Fátyol performs Sofia Jegorovna, who cheats her husband, and she is the woman, who is crazy about Platonov.

Zénó Faragó arrives to the men as the performer of Isaac Abramovich. His father is Abram Abramovich, who is performed by the earlier member of the troupe, by Zsolt Páll. Fortunately, he shows the upstanding, tall, strong and muscular man instead of the boringly known typical Jewish figure. It is a shame that their conflict is one of the unfinished line in the play. We will not know the source of the father-son’s conflict, of their hate, and its final ending. Zoltán Ledvánczky and Ádám Tompa show us the two young men’s impossibility, helplessness from the countryside, who fall in hopelessness, desperation and alcohol.

Ákos Orosz performs the main role, Platonov. In his performance, he melts the countryside boy’s hopelessness, who has given up everything, his teenager humour, his impracticality, that man’s all cynicism, who accepts and ruins all women without any inhibitions, who offer themselves to him, his aimlessness of his spleen, which he cures with alcohol, and finally his death, which can put meaninglessly a point to his meaningless life.

The viewers’ closeness, their involvement in the game at the beginning of the performance, the actors’ calling out, the narrow stage, Zoltán Balázs’ staging – as we can expect it from him – can successfully save the performance from the suffering, fake pathos and sentimentalism of Chekov’s plays, which ae usual here.

Maybe more humour and a little bit shorter text can make this human billiard game even more enjoyable.

György Gold, Szabadidő Magazin, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)