The performing group of The Suit try not a smaller challenge to do than put on stage the South-African writer’s Can Themba’s work on stage as a jazz-opera. Even the basic story is full of tension, but the natural differences of the two music genres and the surprisingly well working mixture of them, can square it all.

On the Open-Air Stage of Városmajor during the warm-up conversation, Ganga Tsengiwe, the Hungarian ambassador of the South-African Republic, talked about the forms, how oppression has appeared in Sophiatown, in the outskirts of Johannesburg, in the 1950s. By putting the performance into a political and historical context, even before the beginning can lead its interpretation, but one of the magics of The Suit is that the story can be interpreted on its own without it: that way, another important and difficult topic, the oppression inside family can be put into the middle. However, it is even more exciting, if we put the two next to each other, as that way the complicated political processes can be seen to be reflected in a micro atmosphere, which is easier to interpret, which grows the weight of all human gestures. And it even highlights the fact, that human games after all are not different from the political ones – and wise versa.

There is game too and fight as well: it turns out that Matilda (Csilla Radnay) has a lover, because her husband, Philemon (Barna Kelemen Bányai) strikes her with an unnatural punishment: from now on she has to treat the suit, which her lover has left there, as it must be a guest. Matilda, who sings at the beginning with confident femininity, slowly loses her shining, and herself too with it. She takes the Suit into her lap, hesitantly feeds it, which for the first time during the history of the stage versions of the short-story, the actor, who performs the lover, in this case Ferenc Fehér performs it too, with the covering of his face. The suit is there on all their social events, at all the meals, and reminds the wife all the time, to her act – she cannot hope, that at a point her husband must be satisfied with this punishment and their life can return to their normal way. For Barna Kelemen Bányai’s Philemon, seemingly nothing is enough: he still seethes on his own, his shape and movements are tight, he does not get wider in the place too, he mostly moves in one spot – he himself, cannot get out of this spiral of revenge, which has been generated by him, and that way it catches him more and more. As it usually happens, he realises it only when it is too late.

The set, which was designed by Zoltán Balázs, consciously limits the place, and that way the already narrowed focus becomes even thicker. The set has more functions, its elements, which can be turned here and there, gives some playfulness and many possibilities for “hiding”, which is the returning element of the performance. The husband is hiding, as well as the lover, and after a while, the wife is too – they are hiding from each other, from themselves, from the world. The performers give place for the association, and we can take it by words, as the place and the happenings are tightly but not obviously connected to each other – for example during Matilda final solo, when she closes herself into the prison of the elements of the set, which are moved here and there. But not only the set, the costumes are also in continuous dialogue with the actions (costume designer: Daniella Sovány), and it is connected finely to the African roots of the story too.

The performers do not have an aim to make an adaptation, which is loyal to the place or the time, on the dresses only some colourful patterns refer to the African style. Matilda’s costume is especially interesting: as the oppression becomes stronger towards her, there are more and more colours and patterns on her dresses – she seems to try sign that way, that there is a problem. When at the peak point of Philemon’s vendetta, we can listen to again Matilda’s song, her husband is the one, who gets the colourful headscarf off the destroyed woman, he opens her hair. She seems to have lost the control over her clothes too.

Adrián Kovács composed the music of the performance, and I must admit, that he has done an excellent work. The lightness and softness of jazz counterpoints well the fixed nature of the opera, and two together can form a special musical world according to its atmosphere. The changings of tempo and rhythm can follow beautifully the actions, which can be seen, and the active nature of the music can always offer something new to our ears. Humour gets its place too, and that way the sounds, which follow the activities, for example of the yawning, can fix into this unique sounding, which base is given by live music (orchestra: András Szép, Benedek Kárpáti, Szabolcs Dörnyei / Balázs Rodek, Balázs Rabóczki, Tamás Gyányi). The libretto is Zoltán Balázs’ work, and the characteristic of the text, which can be unusual for the first time, is that the characters many times talk about themselves in third person singular, as they would narrate their situation, what has happened to them by viewing it from outside. The text is in English, we can follow the happenings in Hungarian only with the subtitles, but we do not need it many times, even when the viewers do not or only a little bit understand English version: the impressions, which are given by the music, the performances of the actors, especially Csilla Radnay’s can lead the viewers by hands. Radnay performs wonderfully not only with her face and body, but with her singing voice too. She can express punctually and understandably all the depth and highness, the wide scale of the suffering and oppressed woman’s feelings.

Zoltán Balázs’ staging connects many elements, which can work well on their own too: the special music, which defines the basics of the performance, the stable performances by the actors, the associative place, the costume, which operates with fine references, they all can become parts of this puzzle. That is why, it is a shame that the role of the Suit – however, it is a good idea, that it is performed by a dancer, who can express so much with his body – cannot take a precise shape. The performance can hardly use this new thing, which remains in the background that way, and does not seem to be such a great thing, as it was mentioned by the performers before. In spite of the encouragement of the free association, the viewers with the sense of lack are looking for in the love-political triangle of the wife, husband and the Suit, the exact place of these later ones, and those gestures, which can tell something about the deeper layers of relationship between the characters and the piece of clothes. However, one piece of the puzzle gets lost, the whole thing can be seen clearly.

Júlia Prizakovics, Revizor Online, 2026

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)