There is this world of gentry in Chekov’s plays, with which we have not got any connection nowadays. It cannot be understood well, why and what do they do and how somebody can be proud, if live on loans and uncertain values of their once noble origin. Chekov is eternal anyway, in spite of the fact, that seemingly money is in the middle of his plays, the real main character is always friendship, love, relationships and all the feelings and conflicts in connection of these. So the director can create a valid, contemporary performance, if he sees the most important thing. Zoltán Balázs comes from the good direction when he gets from the performance the shining of the ball halls, dinner rooms, garden paths, and from the dresses, which were palm itchy over-decorated.

His logic is not based on numerous unexplainable symbols, as the presence of a billiard table can stand in for eventuality, luck, conscious reasoning and everything, with which the human behaviour can be explained. Everybody it connected to everybody, as well as the billiard balls, which sometimes get in connection, push each other on to help them win or distract someone from his aim the other one. It is a game for life. Chekov’s characters also play with their lives, and sometimes with the others. Then Platonov intentionally and sometimes unintentionally becomes the white ball on the billiard table of life.

The actors have only a few properties, but it is not a problem for them, to make us believe, that a billiard ball can be love letter, a cue can be a weapon, or the billiard table can be a dining room. If someone does not perform in a scene, then he is sitting between the viewers and watching. In reality everybody knows everything about the others. There is not any secrets, just benevolent suppression. If someone leaves the scene, then the next character jumps up from his seat. The pictures of the film come one after another fast, but the two and half hours long act is hard anyway. Sometimes we can fell some rhythmical disorder, but luckily a blazing moment almost always comes to help us out.

Ákos Orosz, as Platonov, is watching resignedly as everything is circling around him. First, he is a childish master of jokes on the edge of madness, then he is slowly giving up dissimulation and a misanthrope comes up from him, who hates himself too. This multiple poled personality can explain why he can attract all the women and even the men around him. After a while, a profiler would put on him without a second thought the mark of future suicide, but it can be believed that the other, who live around him, would keep him alive with their love and hate. What we see, it can make real, that everybody has a past, present, fate. Judit Kovács Ligeti’s Anna Petrovna is not a simple failed noble person, but a woman, who can move lines well, who has an attitude, but love can turn her into a silly goose. Ádám Tompa, who performs Triletsky, is not a conceited doctor, but a real hedonist yuppie, who is afraid of responsibilities. As well as Zoltán Lendváczky’s Voynitsev is an over educated unemployed with a load of anxieties instead of a simple parasitic genteel young man. Zsolt Páll’s old Jewish man wishes for some kind of life besides his huge wealth, at the same time he believes that in reality he is the good one, and Zénó Faragó, who performs his son is dandy and besides his playboy-like nature is a real love-eager child. Erika Tankó as Sasha is fragile and powerful, dumb and clever at the same time. Similarly to Kamilla Fátyol’s Sofia, who is not just a simply educated, bored young lady, as she becomes a silly porcelain doll at the moment she sees Platonov. Grekova is not a clumsy one, who wears glasses now, Vica Kerekes can forms her into a passionate woman.

Everybody is real, so their motivations are understandable, the sentences, which we hear, have real meaning. Meanwhile the play is going on, which foreshadows the possibility of improvisation, and even wants it, as the balls usually do not end up there, where they should, a bad push can change everything. During the performance, we can often hear the question: what is your plan. The troupe of Maladype by slapping on face the clichés in connection with Chekov, must have plans, anyway the performance can be better sometimes. But without plans, there would not be any plays too.

Krisztina Szepesi, Pesti Műsor, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)