Ákos Török: The drowsiness of those, who are walking in the Inferno
...the performance has become noticeably bored, the attentions, which have gone away, got back more and more hard...
The Inferno is a very hot part of the world, the Maladype Theatre tells it to us, in their new performance of Inferno: it is here with us on the stage and with us in the auditorium, it watches us, and we watch its strangely similar parts, we recognise ourselves, and the ground starts burning under us. The performance begins well, it slows down, the falls into a calm dream, which makes our mouth water, it understands everything, and agrees with everything.
The greatest surprise of the trailers, that the eight members group of Maladype Theatre, which has not changed for a while – as a guest star – has become nine by Andrea Ladányi, which is not a good omen according to numerology.
Those, who arrive into the place of the performance, are welcomed by a picture of a throne, which is placed into the middle of the stage, there is a handsome, young man on it, with cosy, languid into forced posture. On the top of his throne there are three skulls in regular order next to each other, at one feet of the boy, there is a female figure, next to his other feet there is another human body, by all the three sides of the stage there are black figures in the dark, many of them, and almost invisibly. From the conversation, which is born around the throne, we can soon learn, that here there will be inferno and Faust too soon: this boy will go to the Inferno, to be able to handle well the well-known offer of the ruler of the Inferno.
The text, which has been completed from different places, supposedly with their own phrases too (maybe because of its stylistic mixture), is hard to follow sometimes during the first scene, but at a point of the performance, the viewer, who almost gets asleep because of the heavy verbalism of the initial conversation, gets up. The figures, who are sitting around start to whisper, then they tell it louder and louder, they finally almost yell on the boy, the verdict by Dante, about the resignation of hope, the deep drums can be heard. The boy leaves for the Inferno, somebody starts coughing in the auditorium, he is fighting with it for moments, and who knows why, but it is getting warmer inside.
Zoltán Balázs, the director, builds his performance on view, the reddish black atmosphere, which was made by the deep drums, on the emotionless declamation without any role formations: he celebrates a ritual to us. The basic situation of the rite theatre promises some kind of sanctity and in connection with it something important, common happening too, that is why it cannot bear the ordinary things of actuality. It is a brave commitment. In contrast to it some conspiratorial winking to some actual political term of the play of the Inferno are ordinary, in spite of the fact, that on the level, where sanctities were born, these tiny everyday terms are just small somethings. These refers can be easily detected, so their understanding is not so hard (so it lasts for short) and besides its cheerfulness, they are not followed by big happenings in the auditorium. The heavy cultural political reference can be understood precisely, according to it, none of the creatures, which have been born after Christ, can get into paradise, but those who accept it – besides the momentary self-satisfaction, which is given by understanding – have nothing to do with it. The faceless reflection of the auditorium on the wall in front of the viewers, is for nothing, we can understand our connection with the ones in the inferno for nothing. We get for nothing that when the boy places his own face on the top of the lines of the sculls, he accepts the offer of the inferno anyway (even if he meanwhile declares its clichéd opposition with emotionless, nice words), and no connection has been born in theatre besides the obvious one. The viewers are watching a play in a place, which has been formed especially for it. The sensual pureness of the powerful and sometimes especially witty moving pictures of forms and figures from the inferno, can inevitably create and maintain a kind of unity of the viewers (we can say from those, who sense similarly). However, the understanding of the happenings on stage, which was first fluent, and formed an intellectual community, after a half an hour long performance, became broken, on the most prosaic way. The performance has become noticeably bored, the attentions, which have gone away, got back more and more hard, so fewer and fewer people can follow some moments on the stage at the given time. The sweltering heat is not about the sensibility of inferno for a while, which we have put on ourselves, just about the most prosaic lack of air, the uncomfortable crowding of chairs. It is about the two hundred forints, which we have saved in the cloakroom (the price of it is our coat on our lap) and even the sharp and clear message of the performance can help it anyway. “The Inferno is the Life”, as the performance says it with the overthought sings of the stage, and it supports its message with vivid (more witty and less witty) pictures. With the text, which is not always easy to follow, it evokes the nobodies, those some kind of Somebodies, the One, who eats itself, the offenders of Christianity, those who tear apart themselves and the others, those who cannot hug but always search for each other, but besides sleeping it cannot do much with them. In the auditorium of the Inferno, there is not rite to happen, neither a community is formed, nor works appear in connection with all kind of inferno-like human things, which are well visible, audible and clearly understandable.
The performance of the Maladype Theatre (as many times before) tried to be serious, tried to speak about serious things seriously. The sensible moving picture of descent into the inferno, which has been created inspiringly with rich power of creation, and its more and more cliché-like, many times unfollowable ideas are told on and on, they come and go. The performance just tells its own, while we are waiting in the auditorium for nothing to get the first question in this artistic sea of thesis. So the heads, which have arrived for this conversation, get nodded and they are woken up by the claps.
If we have been made understand something, which we have known by ourselves, which is not less as a knowledge, but as a theatrical performance it is not too much at all.
Ákos Török, szinhaz.net, 2011
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)
The Inferno is a very hot part of the world, the Maladype Theatre tells it to us, in their new performance of Inferno: it is here with us on the stage and with us in the auditorium, it watches us, and we watch its strangely similar parts, we recognise ourselves, and the ground starts burning under us. The performance begins well, it slows down, the falls into a calm dream, which makes our mouth water, it understands everything, and agrees with everything.
The greatest surprise of the trailers, that the eight members group of Maladype Theatre, which has not changed for a while – as a guest star – has become nine by Andrea Ladányi, which is not a good omen according to numerology.
Those, who arrive into the place of the performance, are welcomed by a picture of a throne, which is placed into the middle of the stage, there is a handsome, young man on it, with cosy, languid into forced posture. On the top of his throne there are three skulls in regular order next to each other, at one feet of the boy, there is a female figure, next to his other feet there is another human body, by all the three sides of the stage there are black figures in the dark, many of them, and almost invisibly. From the conversation, which is born around the throne, we can soon learn, that here there will be inferno and Faust too soon: this boy will go to the Inferno, to be able to handle well the well-known offer of the ruler of the Inferno.
The text, which has been completed from different places, supposedly with their own phrases too (maybe because of its stylistic mixture), is hard to follow sometimes during the first scene, but at a point of the performance, the viewer, who almost gets asleep because of the heavy verbalism of the initial conversation, gets up. The figures, who are sitting around start to whisper, then they tell it louder and louder, they finally almost yell on the boy, the verdict by Dante, about the resignation of hope, the deep drums can be heard. The boy leaves for the Inferno, somebody starts coughing in the auditorium, he is fighting with it for moments, and who knows why, but it is getting warmer inside.
Zoltán Balázs, the director, builds his performance on view, the reddish black atmosphere, which was made by the deep drums, on the emotionless declamation without any role formations: he celebrates a ritual to us. The basic situation of the rite theatre promises some kind of sanctity and in connection with it something important, common happening too, that is why it cannot bear the ordinary things of actuality. It is a brave commitment. In contrast to it some conspiratorial winking to some actual political term of the play of the Inferno are ordinary, in spite of the fact, that on the level, where sanctities were born, these tiny everyday terms are just small somethings. These refers can be easily detected, so their understanding is not so hard (so it lasts for short) and besides its cheerfulness, they are not followed by big happenings in the auditorium. The heavy cultural political reference can be understood precisely, according to it, none of the creatures, which have been born after Christ, can get into paradise, but those who accept it – besides the momentary self-satisfaction, which is given by understanding – have nothing to do with it. The faceless reflection of the auditorium on the wall in front of the viewers, is for nothing, we can understand our connection with the ones in the inferno for nothing. We get for nothing that when the boy places his own face on the top of the lines of the sculls, he accepts the offer of the inferno anyway (even if he meanwhile declares its clichéd opposition with emotionless, nice words), and no connection has been born in theatre besides the obvious one. The viewers are watching a play in a place, which has been formed especially for it. The sensual pureness of the powerful and sometimes especially witty moving pictures of forms and figures from the inferno, can inevitably create and maintain a kind of unity of the viewers (we can say from those, who sense similarly). However, the understanding of the happenings on stage, which was first fluent, and formed an intellectual community, after a half an hour long performance, became broken, on the most prosaic way. The performance has become noticeably bored, the attentions, which have gone away, got back more and more hard, so fewer and fewer people can follow some moments on the stage at the given time. The sweltering heat is not about the sensibility of inferno for a while, which we have put on ourselves, just about the most prosaic lack of air, the uncomfortable crowding of chairs. It is about the two hundred forints, which we have saved in the cloakroom (the price of it is our coat on our lap) and even the sharp and clear message of the performance can help it anyway. “The Inferno is the Life”, as the performance says it with the overthought sings of the stage, and it supports its message with vivid (more witty and less witty) pictures. With the text, which is not always easy to follow, it evokes the nobodies, those some kind of Somebodies, the One, who eats itself, the offenders of Christianity, those who tear apart themselves and the others, those who cannot hug but always search for each other, but besides sleeping it cannot do much with them. In the auditorium of the Inferno, there is not rite to happen, neither a community is formed, nor works appear in connection with all kind of inferno-like human things, which are well visible, audible and clearly understandable.
The performance of the Maladype Theatre (as many times before) tried to be serious, tried to speak about serious things seriously. The sensible moving picture of descent into the inferno, which has been created inspiringly with rich power of creation, and its more and more cliché-like, many times unfollowable ideas are told on and on, they come and go. The performance just tells its own, while we are waiting in the auditorium for nothing to get the first question in this artistic sea of thesis. So the heads, which have arrived for this conversation, get nodded and they are woken up by the claps.
If we have been made understand something, which we have known by ourselves, which is not less as a knowledge, but as a theatrical performance it is not too much at all.
Ákos Török, szinhaz.net, 2011
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)