Anyway it was a great relief, when it came out, that not the whole text by Babits would be performed, but instead of it Ádám Nádasdy’s fresh translation is used and they would make the anyway overwhelming text easier to accept with the parts of Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann. As you had to be a man on your foot to understand for the first reading in the school then, this whole translation from the beginning of the earlier century. And at home, in the safety of our comfortable sofa, we can read some sentences again without any punishments. Dante does not have this kind of luck in case of seats during the performance of Maladype. However, the throne, which shows the skeleton of Alien in its ice-cold surreality is breathtakingly imposing and defines in its own the whole unearthly mood of the performance. That is why it is not very likely that for Dante it is a calming feeling to live through captured by the rising ribs of the monster, the inferno of the inferno. Nobody tells, that it would be easy.

Zénó Faragó as Dante tries to make himself believe with tensed body, that he is not afraid, he is not even confused, while he breaks with his thoughts the dimly chewable silence. At the beginning he foreshadows, that he will have to give up all hope by entering the gate of inferno, while Andrea Ladányi as the reincarnation of Vergil’s soul is behind him, while in the background, on the stretched cloth, a frightening faceless troop with dark look close all the entrance from Dante, but especially from us. Ladányi is standing with massive confidence even on high heels, on a small part of the throne, I do not even think about, that this uncharacterized creature can easily falls down from there. As she was sculpted there. She is the only one, who speaks Babits’ language, and she really speaks this elevated, over-coloured on its own, dead language as her mother tongue.

Ákos Orosz’s Lucifer is even more human like. It is hard to tell, how somebody can feels himself at home, on a place, which is his, but he would not wish to anybody being in his position. It is not exemption, but it is understandable, if the actor with painted face, who is turned into a grotesque giant elf, got dressed into skirt and chiffon blouse, is still looking for the answers. From the mouth of the devious host, we can listen to those kind of serious charges against the power, which in spite of the seven hundred years old play, even today can be risen up. His presence becomes solid also by it.

Kamilla Fátyol starts definitely, she shows Beatrice as a powerful, clever and extremely forgiving woman. She repeats the sins more and more wildly, for nothing, finally she expresses, that nothing can be serious enough not to be forgiven. She lets Dante go on his way with these thoughts, than suddenly she is not there anymore. However, she is always there. Maybe, she prepares to lead her love all through the Paradise, where Vergil’s sinful soul is not allowed in.

Zoltán Lendváczky, Ildikó Kovács Ligeti, Zsolt Páll, Erika Tankó and Ádám Tompa can show us, that what kind of fallible souls have got into the circles of the inferno. All of them have characteristics, which could make us momentary forgive them, just because these make us remember our own failed decisions. Meanwhile the hollow-sounding place of Trafó is continuously filled by the flowing mass of twenty-two people, who have been invited as amateurs, but they appear to be professional, they go over us once as suffocating wave, then they make visible as zombies, who are eating bodies and holding each other, the text, which annoyingly wants to make us think over. Ákos Kerényi and Kornél Mogyoró give the last beat of million hearts on their percussion instruments, sometimes with resigned patience, other times with wild desire to break out.

It was a hard, long and tiring evening, but a feeling would remain after it. A thought, which worry me. Leaving the auditorium, the door seems to open directly to the Purgatory. You do not have to believe it, just experience it.

Krisztina Szepesi, Pesti Műsor, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)