In the picture, which was made to be large in front of the auditorium, we can see many hooded figures, grabbing a pistol relentlessly and pointing it at us. Then in the middle of the performance, all of it appears again with similar hooded people as a prefiguration, so we can state that this is the main motif here. It is said that a picture has to be watched for hours, weeks or even months to be able to see its depth. In the Inferno, we do not get that much time, but any kind of random critics could write books about this little montage. Independently from any kind of performances.

Dante is sitting on a huge triple throne with skulls, rented from a fantasy, and in the middle of the flowing darkness he tells many text about the fact that he has got bored with everything in life, and in the end of it he gets down to inferno with his followers. There he can see many very bad things; the sinful ones are lined up there in different ways (The Dante-Inferno scheme is well known from the beautiful illustrations of literature books, in all nine circular structure). Meanwhile Dante can see many famous Greek scientists and philosophers, and he promises a lot to take up into daylight the stories of all those sufferers, who deserves it.

Péter Polgár’s set and Júlia Horányi’s costumes work with futuristic motifs from the middle age, and with that kind of basic ideas of fashion profession that black and red match to each other perfectly, that way the vision is simply beautiful, trendy and cosy. From the percussion instrument this kind of dark middle age atmosphere comes (we can hardly see in front of us the rattling lepers and the freemasons, who are whispering dramatically by the light of the torch). András Szőllősi, the choreographer also moves the grandiose mass of people comparing to the small place, with mostly deep and meaningful reservedness, it is a little bit Hollywood-like, it is a little bit kitschy, but professionally, he draws wonderful, effective pictures. Anyway if the effect is just for itself – as in case of theatre art it is always, until something can add meaning to it – and then it cannot be effective any more just spectacular. The illustration – independently from its beauty – is not content, and for most of the scenes it is enough to be able to show some circles of inferno, and only rarely happens, that they connect a meaning to them (for example, when the suffering ones murmuring a painful rhyme together about greediness).

But the whole performance is similar to a stream of pictures. There are not any characters, figures, people on the stage (it seems to be the conception), there are just grandiose moving pictures, which are changing from scene to scene, without any Greenway-paraphrase like multimedia. It is a kind of set of signs, which seems to get bored of its own compulsion of alienation, and forget to become a structure, and however it gives the appearance of coherence, the big movements, cannot point over the representation of hierarchy. It, because there are not any figures in the story, becomes uninteresting, as it cannot be compared to anything. Maybe the explicitly stated philosophical lesson at the end of the performance, can come from it, about the individuality and other Latin words, as nothing has been shown so far from this kind of “meaning” – however it has to be there somehow. All actual social life-like reference of it (all guest texts, which are strange for the context, would push the performance that way), stand on very weak legs, as from the whole of the performance neither kind of statement can be taken, nor any subject, about which they can be said.

In Zoltán Balázs’ performance all moments of the actors’ grandiose performance are choreography, it can be either the text or the movements. All moments are constructed, all scenes are organised, all moments are steady and stable, all words are heavy and even heavier, all sins are big and even bigger. Apart from some weak trials, there are not any self-irony, there is not any life, and – which we miss from the stage the most – there is not any playfulness. There is only reserved, punctual and gloomy systematic thinking.

Balázs Zsedényi, 7óra7, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)