Dezső Kovács: Games on the billiard table
We are happy to see a formed Chekov interpretation with pure culture of form, clear guiding of thoughts.
The troupe of Maladype performed Chekov’s masterpiece in a performance, which is reduced to the importance of the play, it is totally naked, but artistic too. While we are watching the straightforward performance, which uses easy properties, and listening to the characters’ clear sounding speech, first of all I think, that how modern this play is, not only its language, its world view, but its portrayal, its situations of life, so everything, which can make it obviously suitable to express contemporary ideas even today.
Zoltán Balázs has organised the performance around and above a billiard table and in its flashing then fading light circle. We are sitting around the stage from four sides, the actors are in the first line between the viewers, and they step into the scene from there. The whole performance has a kind of lazy, frivolous, playful, youthful and meditative feeling, as we are not listening to Chekov’s deadly dialogues and word rhymes from the actors’ mouth. The performers deal a lot with the billiard turns, which are fixed between the Chekov texts, with the numbering and placing of the colourful balls, with the technique of the pushes, which are excellent sources of humour and tools of irony almost all the time. The big billiard table, which is enlightened by a shining line of lamps, is the place of the game: they are running around it, they are stepping and fighting on it, on the dramaturgically emphasized places the men push the women many times on it (and the other way around too). Many sequences of scenes, which are full of eroticism, are going on the table, covered with light clothes, there are violent love scenes too, and the couples come together many times in passionate, long kisses. The lazy and continuous game around the billiard table, and the concentration of all the places and scenes on this intense dramatic space give an excellent possibility to the director, to create the pure and clear surrounding of thoughts for the performance. There are not any annoying side sounds and side circumstances: there drama can be heard, which is reduced to its basic elements, and we can see those individuals that are naked down, as they are opening, come up against each other. Zoltán Balázs has reduced the play extremely pure, he has missed out many characters, scenes or connected. He “has charged” a lot to his actors’ performances, between the others with the fact, that he wants an extremely undecorated, but intensive method of play. In the performance there are not any “performing” in its traditional meaning: the performers live the characters with unstudied simplicity, and they tell their texts mostly in a way as ordinary speech can be heard. The artistic experiments of Maladype, which they perform tenaciously and their playing trainings, which could be often seen before in their previous performances become fully flourishing in this performance. We are happy to see a formed Chekov interpretation with pure culture of form, clear guiding of thoughts.
A young and dynamic group of actors bring this performance to success. They not only with great power, but seemingly joyfully immerse into the maze of their passions. In the opening scene they are playing and getting wild almost carelessly. There are loud. They are careless. They are wild. They are brave. Then they slowly start showing the darker side of their characters. The first one of them is Ákos Orosz, who performs the main character, and his explosive Platonov. He is not a melancholic educated man: he is massive marching and clear bomb of energy. He is ironic in a squared shape. He is lazily grotesque. Behind his calm boyish face undivided, rude emotions are moving. Slowly something sweetish and rampant tangle circles around him. He is drifting and escaping: he is losing himself slowly. Orosz’s heavy Platonov finally stands like a statue on the wild battle-like field, his limbs are held by cues, and he falls as an exploded building, which collapses slowly. There is not any shooting of gun, his body and shape get divided somehow; he disintegrates and he is destroyed. Judit Kovács Ligeti’s Anna Petrovna with her big heart is a wild and experienced player of love. She would hug the half of the world, she works persistently to get Platonov. She humbles herself if she has to, and she leaves easily her womanish dignity. Kamilla Fátyol performs Sofia expressively, who is seduced and dizzy. She almost gets rigid because of the owning of Platonov; she becomes more and more assertive, she taps with her legs loudly, she becomes an arrogant woman, and it makes her fall even more ironic. Zsolt Páll has a noble posture, he performs the self-respecting Abram Vengerovich, who always knows punctually that how far he can go. Then he presents a bill rudely. His son, Isaac is performed dynamically and passionately by Zénó Faragó. When they fight with Platonov, the two man stand against each other rigidly on the height of the table (and from the pushful Isaac’s mouth we can hear Osip’s fatal threats, who was deleted from the cast). Erika Tankó performs the not so clever, good-hearted wife, her Sasha is the embodied humility herself: this sensitive woman subordinates herself to her husband from every points of view. While Sofia and Platonov wild love duet is going on the billiard table, the woman carefully balances around the edge of the table. As she is talking to her husband, it is funny and shockingly grotesque at the same time. Vica Kerekes, the nice one, who we have not seen on stage for a while, performs Grekova, the ugly girl, who is suffering from the sarcastic Platonov’s jokes, and she does it illusionary; she is an assertive young woman, she is ready to take a revenge, but finally she cannot get rid of the man’s attraction. Ádám Tompa’s blazing Triletsky is the galvaniser of the performance and once he was its raisonneur too. Zoltán Lendváczky as the cheated Voynitsev has a paler face.
The director keeps together the performance with strong hands: the smaller mistakes of rhythm can be solved during the later performances. However, the programme does not show any translator, the well over-formed and over-cut text has probably been made based on János Elbert’s translation. The costumes, which are just a little bit different from the contemporary dresses can be thanked for Bea Molnár’s work.
Dezső Kovács, szinhaz.net, 2010
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)
The troupe of Maladype performed Chekov’s masterpiece in a performance, which is reduced to the importance of the play, it is totally naked, but artistic too. While we are watching the straightforward performance, which uses easy properties, and listening to the characters’ clear sounding speech, first of all I think, that how modern this play is, not only its language, its world view, but its portrayal, its situations of life, so everything, which can make it obviously suitable to express contemporary ideas even today.
Zoltán Balázs has organised the performance around and above a billiard table and in its flashing then fading light circle. We are sitting around the stage from four sides, the actors are in the first line between the viewers, and they step into the scene from there. The whole performance has a kind of lazy, frivolous, playful, youthful and meditative feeling, as we are not listening to Chekov’s deadly dialogues and word rhymes from the actors’ mouth. The performers deal a lot with the billiard turns, which are fixed between the Chekov texts, with the numbering and placing of the colourful balls, with the technique of the pushes, which are excellent sources of humour and tools of irony almost all the time. The big billiard table, which is enlightened by a shining line of lamps, is the place of the game: they are running around it, they are stepping and fighting on it, on the dramaturgically emphasized places the men push the women many times on it (and the other way around too). Many sequences of scenes, which are full of eroticism, are going on the table, covered with light clothes, there are violent love scenes too, and the couples come together many times in passionate, long kisses. The lazy and continuous game around the billiard table, and the concentration of all the places and scenes on this intense dramatic space give an excellent possibility to the director, to create the pure and clear surrounding of thoughts for the performance. There are not any annoying side sounds and side circumstances: there drama can be heard, which is reduced to its basic elements, and we can see those individuals that are naked down, as they are opening, come up against each other. Zoltán Balázs has reduced the play extremely pure, he has missed out many characters, scenes or connected. He “has charged” a lot to his actors’ performances, between the others with the fact, that he wants an extremely undecorated, but intensive method of play. In the performance there are not any “performing” in its traditional meaning: the performers live the characters with unstudied simplicity, and they tell their texts mostly in a way as ordinary speech can be heard. The artistic experiments of Maladype, which they perform tenaciously and their playing trainings, which could be often seen before in their previous performances become fully flourishing in this performance. We are happy to see a formed Chekov interpretation with pure culture of form, clear guiding of thoughts.
A young and dynamic group of actors bring this performance to success. They not only with great power, but seemingly joyfully immerse into the maze of their passions. In the opening scene they are playing and getting wild almost carelessly. There are loud. They are careless. They are wild. They are brave. Then they slowly start showing the darker side of their characters. The first one of them is Ákos Orosz, who performs the main character, and his explosive Platonov. He is not a melancholic educated man: he is massive marching and clear bomb of energy. He is ironic in a squared shape. He is lazily grotesque. Behind his calm boyish face undivided, rude emotions are moving. Slowly something sweetish and rampant tangle circles around him. He is drifting and escaping: he is losing himself slowly. Orosz’s heavy Platonov finally stands like a statue on the wild battle-like field, his limbs are held by cues, and he falls as an exploded building, which collapses slowly. There is not any shooting of gun, his body and shape get divided somehow; he disintegrates and he is destroyed. Judit Kovács Ligeti’s Anna Petrovna with her big heart is a wild and experienced player of love. She would hug the half of the world, she works persistently to get Platonov. She humbles herself if she has to, and she leaves easily her womanish dignity. Kamilla Fátyol performs Sofia expressively, who is seduced and dizzy. She almost gets rigid because of the owning of Platonov; she becomes more and more assertive, she taps with her legs loudly, she becomes an arrogant woman, and it makes her fall even more ironic. Zsolt Páll has a noble posture, he performs the self-respecting Abram Vengerovich, who always knows punctually that how far he can go. Then he presents a bill rudely. His son, Isaac is performed dynamically and passionately by Zénó Faragó. When they fight with Platonov, the two man stand against each other rigidly on the height of the table (and from the pushful Isaac’s mouth we can hear Osip’s fatal threats, who was deleted from the cast). Erika Tankó performs the not so clever, good-hearted wife, her Sasha is the embodied humility herself: this sensitive woman subordinates herself to her husband from every points of view. While Sofia and Platonov wild love duet is going on the billiard table, the woman carefully balances around the edge of the table. As she is talking to her husband, it is funny and shockingly grotesque at the same time. Vica Kerekes, the nice one, who we have not seen on stage for a while, performs Grekova, the ugly girl, who is suffering from the sarcastic Platonov’s jokes, and she does it illusionary; she is an assertive young woman, she is ready to take a revenge, but finally she cannot get rid of the man’s attraction. Ádám Tompa’s blazing Triletsky is the galvaniser of the performance and once he was its raisonneur too. Zoltán Lendváczky as the cheated Voynitsev has a paler face.
The director keeps together the performance with strong hands: the smaller mistakes of rhythm can be solved during the later performances. However, the programme does not show any translator, the well over-formed and over-cut text has probably been made based on János Elbert’s translation. The costumes, which are just a little bit different from the contemporary dresses can be thanked for Bea Molnár’s work.
Dezső Kovács, szinhaz.net, 2010
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)