A marriage cannot mean the same to everyone. Its assessment and meaning depends on social, cultural, religious and many other aspects. It is a sanctity for some, for others it is just a paper between the others. But what does it mean for Don Juan, who changes his wives, as others their shirts, he seduces women with it, but as easily he gets married, he disappears as well as too, he does not care about the promises, oath or the feelings of the other one? Sándor Zsótér asks this question from the viewers with his newest staging of Brecht, which – after many other common works – he performs together with the actors of the troupe of Maladype. He does not excuse Don Juan of the sin of cheating.

In the performance, the characteristics of the flat theatre of the Base of Maladype have a defining importance, because the small place requires that way of speech, which is very similar to the ordinary one, and it moves the actors’ performance towards realism. The place is basically organised by the giant Dali-painting, which is placed on the ground and on the ceiling, it is the copy of the painting of In the sky by Gala and Dali, on which we can see the lovers’ entering into heaven. For the viewers the chairs are placed around the painting, by the four walls of the room, so the stage is in the middle, the three doors, through which the actors move in and out, can refer to the presence of other places – their continuous using enlarges the place, and brings more movement into the performance.

However the famous painting organises place not only on the physical level – as a set – but on a fictional one too, with those denotative and connotative meanings, which can be found in it. The original version of the painting is a fresco, it decorates the ceiling of the room of The palace of the winds in the Dali museum in Barcelona. This exhibition hall gets its name from the famous Indian palace, on the front of which there are many windows in favour of the women of the harem, who live in there. So the painting refers not only to Gala (with her other name Elena Ivanovna Diakonovna) and Salvador Dali’s love, which gesture can be a reference to the saint connection of a marriage, but it also marks the place of the story in a harem. It becomes even more complicated because of the fact that Gala, at the beginning of the 20th century, had as many lovers, that they could be handled as a male harem of artists too. Above all the painting can be seen on the ground and the ceiling at the same time, so the love, which paints itself as a celestial one, becomes profane, especially because during the performance the actors are walking on it.

The surrealism, which is evoked by Dali’s painting, is completed with and connected to the elements of camp style, which presence can keep the viewers far from the empathy, and the performance from the evoking of a true historic era. According to it, Don Juan (Ákos Orosz) and Sganarelle’s (Zoltán Lendváczky) ruffled cuffs can refer to their social status, but the bright colour of their suits and their colourful trainers take us far from the 17th century. While the girls’ folkloric dresses from the village (Erika Tankó, Rita Kerkay) can be read symbolically, the ushanka on the Don Luis Tenario’s (Norbert Nagy) head, can be understood only from the point of view of camp. (costumes: Mari Benedek).

It is true in case of some elements of the set too. (set: Mária Ambrus) There are, for example three statues of Virgin Mary and one of Jesus with the help of which, the religious kitsch appears. But the performance does not use them as simple objects. Many times the statues work in their religious quality, which we can pray for, many times these are those kind of puppets, which can stand in for actors too. For example, when Pieter (Márton Pallag), the fisherman saves Don Juan and Sganarelle from the water, by the movement of putting a coat on the statues, by that they suddenly become wet people. The two plastic toy babies, which are there from their shoulders – which are similar to busts too – sometimes stand in for the noble men, who are swimming and drowning, then sometimes for women heads, or by Sganarelle’s list, for many types of women, who Don Juan has seduced without any hesitation.

The actors can lead with their pure looks, how we can interpret these objects: if they look at some puppets at certain parts of the text, then the text becomes and works as a reference, or even as an action. The Christ statue has elevated importance from this point of view, when some characters are talking to the great womanizer, many times they do not look into Ákos Orosz’s eyes, who performs him, but into the eyes of the statue. That way the characters of Jesus and Don Juan are connected, and it refers to the fact, that both of them interpret themselves as almighties.

In case of Don Juan it is true, as nothing is saint for him. He is not religious, he does not believe in God or in any upper power, which can ruin him. With it, he can raise indignation and fear on its own, in those, who are around him, which is raised even more by the fact, that he does not even respect those moral laws, which are written by the order of the world, in which he lives. That way, according to his interpretation even a marriage cannot be a holly sing – it has totally lost its importance till our death, and instead of it, it has been degraded into an object, the usage of which he cannot avoid in the given moral order. In Zsótér’s staging this order is not a value for Don Juan, it is more likely a place, in which he has to find his way, and in which he has to fulfil his own ideas, in favour of being able to live in real life.

Finally, he fails it, when he is swallowed by the flames of hell – as nobody can evade the rules, avoid the results of his acts. In reality the story follows a great conqueror’s (the main hero many times makes himself similar to Alexander the Great) fall, that way the question rises rightfully, which is in Brecht’s version anyway: what is comedy in it?

Natália Kovács, Kortárs Online, 2013

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)