Hajdu has created excellently those typical figures, who stands in for different „mentality”, who are interesting for other reasons. All the characters are controversial because none of them is immaculate.

And what do you usually quarrel about? And how do you tease each other?

There are great, spectacular things, there are catastrophes, there are incompatible characters, there are violent ones. There are very tensed moments, the hotspots of the family, there are „usual” ones, who just cannot exist together. And there are the others, but they can annoy each other too, but most of the time, they cannot even tell, exactly how they can do it. How the things go wrong. Even if from outside it looks like as everything is okay with my wife, husband, child, then why there are always arguments at home. The reasons of these tiny but acute illnesses are harder to get than the spectacular quarrels or the unbearable situations. Szabolcs Hajdu’s new play, which he has written and put on stage to the Maladype Theatre is so amazing because it tries to do it, with excellent style, humour, and he can show those things which phase out and make rough the previously always smooth edges of the living together with the punctuality of an experiences social worker or of a great-great grandfather, who has risen up more generations.

Ernella and Eszter are siblings, both of them have a husband and a child. Eszter and her family live in a huge flat in Budapest, where a night Ernella and her family arrive suddenly, because after a year they come back from Scotland where they have planned to move out for ever. This situation is a perfect laboratory for Hajdu to examine the appearing sources of tension, which are always presented under the normality of the surface. That the mother is too indulgent with the children, and the father is too strict. That I have not told it that way then, that can you remember, next time I will record it, as it always happens. Why do you always fall down my little girl, have not you learnt to walk, it is for no reason, that your parents have done so many things for you? Fix your hair, why are you smiling now, what is so funny. I do not have to tell him, I remember well, it is enough if I am right – then the other day of course, it is good to bring it up to him again. How do they have money for such a big flat and for this kind of fireplace, but at least the insulations of their windows are so bad. And besides all those very familiar and typical types there are those really outspoken and because of it liberating topics too: the father, who is annoyed by his son, since he was born, the married couple, who has felt themselves too, that the appearance of the child ruined their marriage, as “the two of them do not want to become three”.

Hajdu can put all these into the almost banal frame, which is enjoyable according to its happenings too, into an interesting and witty drama, which is made up from everyday happenings, in which the types of human behaviours, and the interpersonal conflicts are always connected well, that way the text does not seem to be a case study or an extreme collection, which is dragged there. Above it, it is meaningful on its own, it is unavoidable and because of it, it is not entertaining only from the theatrical point of view, but this elevating confrontation with the shadows of our own life can point over itself from human point of view too. The ex-emigrants, who come back from Scotland, can tell with blurring eyes, that how different the “how can we say? mentality” abroad than here in Hungary. The whole performance can be interpreted as a slap which is given to this well-known statement – with their behaviours the characters also perform that kind of mentality, which should be avoided from great distance. However, the escape is impossible, if we take the one, who chase, with us.

Hajdu creates excellently those differently typical figures, who stand in for different “mentality”, who are interesting for different reasons. All the characters are controversial, as none of them are immaculate. According to one of the couples it must be terrible for the other couple to live that way, they have not loved each other anymore, while on the other way around, they are thought to live on “unbearably low mental level”. One of them looks down to the others from the pedestal of moral sense of superiority, then the other one examines them with the yellow eyes of jealousy, which he has denied even for himself too. One of them hit their child, if he is bad, the other ones take care of the moral rightness of education, but in reality, they do not feel any love towards their son. Behind the great love there is the shadow of old betrayal, in the moral lesson the gypsy calling, a few seconds before, can be echoed as well.

The actors with their performances can match new dimensions, layers of meaning to the written texts. The actress of Maladype, Ágota Szilágyi, besides the one, which is on paper, can perform another drama too: as she – being afraid of the father’s anger – worries, if something fells from her hands, as she is looking at her envied “model father” with real naïve, childish love, at her uncle, as he can express all his thoughts about her cousin with a well-chosen facial expressions, with whom she is told to play, and with the pride, which is expressed by his body position. Seemingly he does not talk, but his eyes tell everything. The other “child”, Imre Gelányi performs the stubborn boy, instead of the archetype of the shy girl, that way he can find that narrow path, where the exaggerations and the childish words, which are told with soldier-like, almost brutal voice and body language are incredibly funny but are not still cartoonish.

Szabolcs Hajdu and Orsolya Török-Illyés, who performs his wife, can find very punctually the soul of civilians, who has smooth skin, and nett and excellent moods, who do not recognise, that they judge and sentence everybody with their good advices, meanwhile they are also needed some correction of their way of life. From their words – especially in case of Hajdu – we can feel the knowledge of their elevated moral nature, behind all their good will there is the self-satisfaction which expressed punctually with stresses, metacommunication.

Ernella’s family so Domokos Szabó, who can be called to be Hajdu’s constant actor, and Erika Tankó from the Maladype, perform the perfect opposite of the Wolfs: Szabó has been so deep in the inferiority complexity, and because of it, into the fake proud arrogance, while he is moving all through with bent back, pulled in neck, and in all of his words we can hear the sounds of “no matter-do-not-ask-it”, and then the other time we can see the smugness of gloating in his smile. In contrast to it, Tankó takes the figure playfully; it can be seen on her, that she tries to believe what she says, as well as, that she is not sure about the truth of her words, with her excessive gestures she strengthens her persuasiveness. The anyway elevated artistic naturality and the feeling of knowledge, which comes from it, the writer-director can increase with perfect tiny things, with tiny lies (for example the “I am just working” means card games), with hidden exposures (when the boy hits the girl, her mother immediately thinks, that the father has done it).

But all of it is not exciting only on the level of actions and play; Hajdu takes care to elevate somehow the drama from realism with the help of form. Because of the surreal elements – blue of green vines, green painted foods, suitcases that never run out during the packaging – and because of the dynamic-strange handling of time, which is mixes together without any signs the hours and days, the performance is like a continuously disappearing memory or dream, where the circumstances are not good for sure, because people can remember only the most important things. Emese Moroncsik’s set supports this fragments-like nature of thoughts: the place is ruled by a patchwork table-cloth, which is sewed from different pieces, the strange clothes, which are sewed on the chairs, the pieces of clothes, which are pulled onto the lamps and torn decorations from the walls, with them the music, which does not become complex from the sequences, is in perfect harmony too.

The trap of the topic, it the fact, that the scales of the pictures of life, of the everyday arguments can be so long that we can go on with them forever, their ending is either impossible, or if it happened with an extreme idea, it would go against the closeness of the ground. Szabolcs Hajdu cannot avoid this trap: the end of the performance is not only kitschy (if we do not think that the playing of Imagine by John Lennon can be the caricature of kitschy things), but a little bit ungraceful too. However, Wolf’s, who is performed by Hajdu, final words to his wife are wonderful, they contain many things, and they can echo for a while in our ears. Or they could echo if Lennon did not try to get the well-deserved and earned honour from the performers.

Bálint Kovács, szinhaz.net, 2015

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)