Those photos are important to us, which we cannot see, but somehow with their meanings they are in front of our eyes, a performance can become „visual” in reality, when it is not here, then it turns out, that what has remained on our retinas, in our feelings, in our minds. Surprisingly many boring, even tiring performance can become important later, as the (physical) boredom leaves us, and some ideas, recallable sensuality, real experiences can remain. Other way, some hours of our lives fall out without any traces.

Maybe it would be better if I did not learn even later that how hard the troupe of the Maladype Theatre has worked to perform Macbeth/Anatomy, what kind of rehearsal period is behind it (night rehearsals in an Italian haunted town, the top of the mountain, monastery). Maybe there, on that place the performance can be saved, and can be filled with our imagination thanks for the place, its energies are turned up; it is a common thing. The Trafó seems to be hopelessly big and they are unable to fill it (not with the viewers, they are sitting even on the stairs). The long, crowded performance, which put the viewers to the test, after all still leads to fall apart, even if some pictures of it can be remembered, and the composition is so complicated that a final exam can be written on it.

Macbeth, besides many other plays by Shakespeare, is especially suitable not only for the endless reduction, to be cut into a one-character play, but many ritual theatres – according to this still – have been performed from it. This means that: they will not tell the stories of the play on the stage, we do not get an adaptation, which is in connection with our present world or with the concrete reality, but they find an independent world, which is closed into itself, with its own system of signs and inner stories.

The performances of Maladype can effect with the power of form, when they can. At the same time, many times empty, formal plays are performed by them, especially in big places. The theatrical troupe, which leaves their tiny area behind, seems to be lost, silent and they are unable to be heard now in the Trafó – we cannot understand the actors’ voice, sometimes they seem to be speaking a foreign language, and after a while I give up listening to Lőrinc Szabó’s difficult lines. There are many technical mishaps too, which are not allowed by this kind of ritual performances (the loudspeakers are feeding back, the lightings are bad).

The title refers to the fact that we will be able to see into the depth of the play, which is reduced to the most important things and it is lighted through by X-ray. The vision of the stage brings this kind of metaphors (the set has been made by the director, by Zoltán Balázs), and when I have watched it more, I can see the different elements of the composition, the offered parallels: the instrumental body of the huge set, the strings of the background, the weird guitars – which were simplified from the skeleton-, from the so called skeleton guitars to become string – the skeleton of the fossil, which defines the whole stage or the man of sticks, which is moved as a puppet. The actors’ naked bodies also appear in order to reach “the most important thing” (anyway it is a cleverly used nakedness), as well as the small black rodents that “mean” the rats: all these are important animal-like elements of human inside, these are the metaphors of the bad one, which is inside. This visual system of motifs would become complete, if the possibility of the acceptance by the viewers can be found somehow in this (big) dream by the director. If all these “voice and craziness” (a quote from the Macbeth) can from some kind of meaning in us. If the director held the viewers’ hands little bit more carefully and maybe with more affection, that way he guides us into his world, and he would not get closed in front of us by admiring his pictures, which he has put on one another. So he should communicate somehow with the viewers. All pictures try to have their effects on us, but none of them talks to me. Zoltán Balázs’ skeletons are silent. They remain dead. That is way, I am thinking about that who does not have the synopsis of the bloody handed couple’s story, what can do with “Cawdor’s thane”.

The play, which is stripped into five characters – probably thanks for Zoltán Balázs’ dramaturgical work – cannot express neither that kind of intellectual nor sensual content, which can tell anything about the person, which could fill this more imagined than that kind of form, which was born from a feeling. There is hardly any connection between the characters, the energies go away, it is hard to go on. The play can be called as III. Richard or any other ones from the Elizabethan era – and as it remains on the level of generality, it is the fault of it too.

Ákos Orosz, who is enchanted other times in a small place, now gets lost as Macbeth. Only Andrea Petrik’s appearance on stage, who has got used to bigger stages, can bring some fleeting breakthrough, but either, she cannot sing, or it is impossible in this performance. Pál Péter Szűcs, who creates the music material, and who is important also as an actor, is always exciting, however, he cannot do anything with the technical problems. Zoltán Lendváczky and Erika Tankó remain incomprehensible, no matter how hard they work.

As the English say it: all of it is pretentious, or as it is translated by the dictionary: it is ambitious, loud, sets expectations, sensationalist, arrogant.

Andrea Tompa, Magyar Narancs, 2013

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)