Norman Bel Geddes, the American painter and set-designer, the founder of the thousand members Guild Theatre, designed a God tempting arena for The Divine Comedy. His ambitious monumentality has never come to alive, because of the costs, but it has become famous.

Max Reinhardt after it ordered from him the world touring set of The miracle. The Croesus-like exhibition is a tempting view. Its puritan version puts the inner beauty into the foreground of the view. Kazimir in 1968, in the Circle Theatre put it on stage as an oratory in nightdresses, with Sándor Weöres’ text edition, with Mária Sulyok and Lajos Básti’s musical sounding recitation.

The Maladype Theatre put on the stage their own Inferno performance by Dante into the place of Trafó from their saved up pocket money, according to Péter Polgár’s inventive and economical set plans, with Júlia Horányi’s costumes. With the highly professional lighting they can create inferno-like darkness, mysterious glow.

The souls, who are put into black clothes, are sitting around on thirty metal structured modern bar chairs. Only some uncovered upper bodies and female shoulders can be seen to be white. The frightening figures, who are painted onto the background, on which hats cover their hawk-nosed faces, can show the performers to be endless with their half-presence.

There is a simmering, waving, flooding, plastic crowd. Sometimes it is an impenetrable phalanx. They brake up into atoms. Their hoods cover their faces, but when some pairs of eyes can be seen, these are lifeless, they are objects of the other world that are moving like objects. Because of their performance, we have to register them, because Bettina Alscher, Gábor Bordi, Lívia Sarolta Csányi, Zita Horák, Lilla Horváth, Dalma Juhász, Tamás Kerekes, Judit Kovács, Gergő Krausz, Lilian Kutrik, Marcell Lakos, Kata Lukáts, Kati Mácsai, József Nagy, Zoltán Nemes, Ildikó Orbán, Letícia Orgován, Viktor Pataki, Cintia Peller, Tamás Rábavölgyi, Eszter Sákovics, Tímea Samu, Dorottya Urai, Brigitta Varga, Kata Zelencsuk have stressed presence on the stage. The twenty-five civilians, who has applied for the notice, with a weeklong rehearsal – if I know well, free – with their ordered devotion serve the wobbling, flying, laying, disappearing, then appearing guilty souls, who form the dynamic set. In their black cotton clothes make us remember from the 20s Alice Madzsar and Ödön Palasovszky’s movement-artistic veteran-like experiments.

Ákos Kerényi, Kornél Mogyoró play together the percussion instruments, as the movements beat, toll and snuffle. The musical background gives the movement, or the movements can be heard.

The Play was born by a dark era. There were split up, irreconcilable political infightings. It was the era of betrayal, cheats, violence, feuds, robberies by power, contemptible greediness, the oppression of the ordinary people, shameless financial businesses, unprincipledness, vendetta, murders, ugly lies. It is the era of political Firenze. The performance makes us sense the degenerate sins, which fill the relationships as they would be contemporary, based on Dante without any fluttery winking of a single eyelash.

The central metal structured set – it can be a dentist’s chair crowned by skulls, or it can be a huge, double-armed corkscrew – Dante Alighieri, the author himself is sitting in the middle, as György Dózsa did it on the burning throne. He does not go down into the circles of inferno. The scales of hallucinations are working in his head. Zenó Faragó gives his voice, which is not resonant, it is powerless, with some kind of monotony, while he is sitting in the centre. Two of his followers are next to him: Beatrice, who is crystal-beautiful in- and outside too, is exposed by Kamilla Fátyol, then her presence breaks up soon, as a rainbow coloured soap bubble. From now on, she is invisible.

Ákos Orosz cannot do anything with the role of Lucifer. Before his birth, his playing method was connected to László Ungvári. His mask comes before the birth of the writer of these lines, it is the theatrical make-up from Gyula Csortos. Behind and above them, these is Andrea Ladányi’s (Vergil) seemingly emotionless passion that stands in for Dante’s incorruptible political hate, his implacability, which can see all from above, witty, with his mental superiority. The cruel judgement of the scanning mental state. Ladányi does not miss the sharp mockery because of the unnecessary things. The reserved irony. We cannot connect two false critical phrases to the talented performer at all. The lack of tools, as her artistic compactness express the most important thing, which is forged to be lean on high heat. The other one is: the empathy. We cannot blame Ladányi with it. In contrast with the actors, who feel themselves extremely inspired, Ladányi, as usually the greatest one do, with the total concentration of the individuality performs her role all through the performance.

The love scene by Judit Kovács Ligeti (between her other ones, Thais, the courtesan), Erika Tankó (Francesca) and Ádám Tompa (Paolo) is an extraordinary performance: “he kissed on my lips, I was shaking nervous. That was Galeotto becomes the book and its writer too. That day we did not read any more” – with Babits’ words. Tompa’s Judas is strong, from the point of view of pictures and performing art and its body-mimic performance. Zoltán Lendváczky’s grotesque, suffering puppet head, which sometimes appears, from the shapeless human circle, and Zsolt Páll’s brutalist presence.

I have read some fast-made critics about the Inferno. They complained, that they could not understand it. Have they read the Play? I have read it. I did not understand it. I can speak about it, write about it, but I cannot understand. They want desperately to understand Dante, instead of feeling it. Theatre is not the place of ratio. If we want to find meaning anyway in the performance, we knock the door from the wrong side, we can never get it. I would like to get immersed in philology. I would not compare Babits’ translation to Ádám Nádasdy’s new text, which has been made on this occasion, and I would not deal with the fragments, which have been put in like patchworks from Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus and Paolo Santarcangeli’s writing. The one and half hour long Inferno, which is performed in the Trafó, is not a literature lesson on Dante. In the Városliget, in the Circle Theatre The Divine Comedy was an explosive summer success. Many people rushed to watch it. They bought tickets. They watched it. They left the theatre well-educated. A proud self-conscious made people more, to be able to replace their failures. They can absolve during three hours, the mental immersion of long years. They have known The Divine Comedy.

The Maladype’s Dante performance is something different. Balázs’ performance goes doomed up against the running theatrical trend. It is no the Dante course of the University of the Knowledge of All. It is not a lyrical fast learning course.

It is an autonomous theatre.

Péter Gál Molnár, szinhaz.hu, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)