The dominant tool on the stage is risky, as the main characteristic of a dominant tool on stage is to rule – the game can come after it.

In the Platonov-performance of Maladype Theatre the dominant tool is a billiard table, and the performance starts with Triletsky, who introduces us – shortly and understandably – into the rules jungle of the game. Than short games come with changing partners – the actors are perfectly spontaneous, as the ball is the most autonomous during this evening, it is not obedient at all – then the drama and the performance too can get over the billiard table. In the strictest meaning of the word too.

Zoltán Balázs’ staging started with the dramaturgical “over writing” of Chekov’s first play: with Judit Góczán, the dramaturg, they re-grouped the characters well, they cut and made more complex, in the end nine figures have remained, four women and five men – from the other point of view, Platonov, the main character is surrounded by four women and four men. The dramaturgical work, from the point of view of construction is convincing, from the point of view of the text, it is less, as it remains a little bit more confused: some characteristics, tiny moments cannot be connected anyway to the given character.

Platonov by Zoltán Balázs is almost the story of youngsters; Ákos Orosz in the main role is a stressed “familiar from somewhere” modern figure, a boy from the neighbour, whose socialising education has stopped somewhere, somehow, so he is a little bit strange. And then when he appears in the so called, central place – it can be on a billiard table, or a house of a pub or a general’s wife’s house too – where the usual group has not met for a while, or he has not visited them for a while, then something happened. The gossip news and the international literature are full of these kinds of stories.

The side characters of the drama are put into the two Vengerovich figures: the father and his son line up next to the main character. The older Vengerovich, the owner – Zsolt Páll represents it first shyly than more definitively this: he owns everything here, all the balls on the billiard table and even the light bulbs over it, and even the general’s wife’s nice dress too. His son, Isaac is coming for a visit from abroad to get some money from his father; their stormy relationship can express well the modern relationship of parents and children from the classical generation’s rebel until the once existed and again actual cosmopolitan nature. Isaac – according to Zénó Faragó’s performance is a little bit too violent – he can be worthy opponent to Platonov according to Zoltán Balázs’ interpretation, he can show a useful alternative against laziness, but he does not do it anyway.
Chekov’s characters have started with such hopes and become something else – so it is the dichotomy of illusion and reality: it can be the so called summery of Platonov (too). It is a funny summary, if we think it over, that Platonov is twenty-two years old, when he cried for himself, who he was once, and Sofia cannot be more than this, when they have failed their own great restarting, for which anyway the viewers would pay even a coin.

And not only because of the fact that the other women, who are circling around Platonov, can confuse the desires, but because in Platonov there is not any decision to start somehow again. According to Zoltán Balázs’ resigned interpretation, it is not about any kind of self-sufficiency, when Platonov is speaking and dreaming about the travelling with Sofia, it is only simple excuse for the general’s wife, who also tries to get him. Who anyway – according to Judit Kovács Ligeti’s little bit thin performance – can offer him a more comfortable alternative, a nice and irresponsible affair. But Platonov is not the loot for women - but for himself.

The billiard table and the very contemporary, but anyway reduced dimension of interpretation is getting the tension out of the play. From the scenes, which are composed around the performance, the fight gets lost, the bet of fighting against one another, and only the tension of the colliding of the balls and the moderate excitement of their symbolic meaning, which can be used in wider and narrower sense, can remain. They can push the balls like fireworks, they throw them to one another as followers of a fight with words, or they use them as properties – these situations can question with a good possibility the topic of fantasy and technique.

The first part is very long, but in a subjective way: it is not being built, it does not become higher or deeper, but like a picture of life, widens horizontally. The dynamic of the second part is stronger, however its form is modest, as Platonov’s suicide turns into a ceremony, and it can become very regrettable rather than tragic. There are many ideas, many theatrical gag can be circle around it, which can say anyway that here everybody is Platonov a little bit (understand it well: everybody has their own problem) but nothing else.

The actors (Kamilla Fátyol as Sofia, Vica Kerekes in the role of Grekova, Erika Tankó’s Sasha, Ádám Tompa’s Triletsky, Zoltán Lendváczky’s Voynitsev) can understand well and fulfil with all their knowledge Zoltán Balázs’ staging ideas. Ákos Orosz’s performance as Platonov can be seen as a real alter ego of the director, in the performance, which is not perfect, earth-shattering but it has effects, and makes us thinking it over.

Judit Csáki, Magyar Narancs, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)