Five acts, thirty-six scenes, which would be enough for three evenings. More than four hundred characters. The Maladpye Theatre performed it with fire actors, in the building of the Eötvös Student Hostel behind the Marcet Place (Krétakör has rented it). We do not miss the missing three hundred ninety-five. An actor can be multiplied. They play more roles. If the viewers can find it out: who stands for which role, and then they can get a gift. During Musset’s life the play has never been put on stage. His brother, Paul, overworked the text for the Odeon in 1863. The censor of the czar prohibited the play, which was about a murder of a king, and it was against the church. Three years later its reduced version of three acts, was performed for the first time in the Renaissance. Sarah Bernhardt performed it with her golden voice well corseted. As a role of trousers between Hamlet and The Eaglet. She did it as a transvestite. The thirty years old, Gérard Philipe made the young - Lorenzaccio successful in Avignon in 1952.

Musset wrote the very boring Confessions by the Children of the Century. We can think: he felt himself modern, he lived together with George Sand, who was two years older than him, she wore trousers and smoke cigars, travelled by horse, and she used a male artistic name in her everyday life too. (The last sound of the first name should be pronounced!) Lorenzaccio is also called as French Hamlet, the “dark knight”, the hero, who tells his sentences in wild-romantic posture, makes laugh of the tragic things. He does not treat world seriously. Nor himself. Victor Hugo recites clichés to fill the auditorium against the arrogance of a writer of leading articles. Rostand can enchant us with his songs. The old Dumas grabs the viewers with his ability to tell stories. Musset is looking for self-awareness with his honesty at his own expense. He has a bad opinion about himself. The clarity is fighting with depravity inside him. He is insolently outspoken. He has only a little respect towards the others.

Mária Ambrus’ set is a table in the bare room. On it there are connected piles of knitted red gloves. These are cut, bloody hands. (We should not forget that in the early Zsótér’s Shakespeare there was a bloodbath in the horror drama of Titus Andronicus, they cut off Lavinia’s both hands: the staging put long red gloves on the amputated parts of body.) In Lorenzaccio’s background the female choir is knitting gloves, these are wrist-warmers to the Russian battlefield. Éva Bakos is in the lead, who is indifferent, as one, who is inviting to the dead ones. She makes us remember the bloodcurdling knitting women of the French revolution at the foot of the gallows. The choir makes the bloody hecatomb. The dresses, properties, hats, gloves according to Mari Benedek’s design, use all shades of blood. The characters are dressed in from bluish reddish until the paper red, in the colours of blood. The weapons are gladioli instead of swords, covered with blood. The characters are playing hide-and-seek between the piles of gloves, which stand in for the mass of killed ones. Not in a frightening pile, but with joy of a childish play.

Zsótér packs Renaissance story, which is rich in externals of a great opera, into a place of two phone boxes, with a reduced number of actors. The pathos is fuss. The romantic personality mocking inner conflict. The dignity and heroism are their own contrast at the same time. The romantic heroes treat themselves so seriously, that they become ridiculous. Kamilla Fátyol blows a light red rubber glove with power. It is murderous mockery. It is mocking murder.

From Zoltán Lendváczky, who has finished the puppet course on the university, we can see all kind of faces. He seems to learn the multiple meaning mimics from the puppets with changing eyes positions. He is zigzagging untouchable between the tragic and comic one. We are not able to decide: he is cheering or ready to die because of it? He is tempting and flirting woman. He covers his modesty with suppressed giggle. But it is possible, that with his third eye, he can see himself turning from man to woman, and laugh at himself. He checks himself from in and outside. His own jokes do not leave him cold. He laughs at his costumes. He makes us not to be able to take him seriously. And at the same time, he is tripled. Once there is the standing young actor. Who is a woman imitator, and laughs at his mask. He is identical with himself. With the role of his role. And with the critic of the dissimulation of his role. He seems to be enjoy playing. He does not enjoy that he is watched. He would entertain himself with the hide-and-seek of his personalities.

Ákos Orosz-Lorenzaccio has different facial features. His face has changed. His cheeks are blown up like a balloon. We cannot decide where he watches. His look moves toward more directions, he seemingly cannot fix his attention, and he looks around sneakily. He does not use any properties: anyway, he seems to be transformed into a Chinese one. It is a brilliant movement. All comedians can know things like these. He makes himself cleft-lipped, or he reorganised his face with cross-eyes. His trick gets into the play, which is handled as a game. It is only one turn of the honest seriousness of child-game. There are waves of mimics, the clown-like colourfulness of the surprises of his mimicry can multiply the expressions of mimics of a kaleidoscope.

Ádám Tompa is failed heroic, he is full of love, he is a performer of a horror drama. He is cruel like a naughty child. He accepts massacre with playful pleasure.

In Júlia Ungár’s dynamic translation, the workshop performance of Lorenzaccio by Maladype comes before its premiere in the Autumn Festival in Budapest.

Péter Gál Molnár, Népszabadság, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)