Our collections of idioms and proverbs know six or seven phrases, in which the word of glove appears. Three of four of them our more sophisticated everyday language use with pleasure. Make someone learn how to trumpet into a glove: give a lesson from humanity, either with strictness of some smacks or hits. Throw a glove into the other’s face, in front of his foot: make someone fight. Pick up the thrown glove: he is ready to measure his power with the other one, who wants it in public. The expression of sewing a glove to someone can also appear sometimes: he will punish someone, who deserves it.

All these meanings can be connected to Alfred de Musset, who lived between 1810 and 1857, (play) writer’s most popular play (in which the word of gloves also appears). The Gentleman wrote it: the magic young man, who had noble origin, was only twenty-four years old, when he wrote Lorenzaccio, his romantic giant play. This play moves great amounts of characters, and he was only twenty-six, when he handed down the result of his well-known, wild and failed love affair with George Sand, with the title of The testimony by the Child of the Century to posterity. It has been rarely mentioned, that this author was one of the – maybe just because of pleasure, he was productive in spite of the failures – reticent great writers. He lived only forty-seven years, but during the last twenty he created only some accidental texts, and then he put down the pen forever: his illness, he withdrawal from the membership of the French Academy closed him into silence. And who dared to mess with him (of course, only with his memory), because of some of his ideas and writing solutions? The other great reticent, the genius Arthur Rimbaud, who lives only thirty-seven years.

Sándor Zsótér has not been very interested in neither the proverbs with gloves not the additives of history of literature, when he accepted the invitation (not for the first time) of the Maladype Theatre and decided to put this play on stage. But to the organisation of the performance, there must be a great component that moral standard, which has always been characteristic to Zsótér, and which has turned into more declared moral responsibility lately. The actualizing or political social life are not important in connection with him – but the sensitive social attention is; as it is normal in case of someone, who understands Brecht well. He has put on stage, The exception and the rule by Bertolt Brecht with this point of view, (together with Vassa Zheleznova by Gorky) in the National Theatre. And then in the Örkény Theatre, in his fresh Brecht performance (Arturo Ui’s containable rise) the main character, the gangster (for thirty percent money of defence) does not offer his nice protecting and guarding services not only to greengrocers, who were in danger supposedly in Chicago and in other American big cities but to – between the others – so called involved shop keepers in Hódmezővásárhely, Pilisborosjenő, Budapest. The sovereign aesthetic order, which in case of Zsótér on one hand, is based on the strictly treated objective and visual meanings of the text of the play, on its “translation”. On the other hand, he creates from the series of radical abstractions his own formal and lyric plot. His unique originality has been completed next to a partner, who understands the viewers, together with the approach, which is part of the social openness.

In the New Studio of Thália we get into our hand the table of content of the play, which is translated by Júlia Ungár dramaturg, who has composed it to five actors (for twenty-five roles) for nothing, we cannot understand nothing from the renaissance and from Firenze coming wandering of the story of Lorenzaccio. “Filippo Strozzi is annoyed because of the social situations, he talks accidentally in front of his son, Pietro, that Gyula Salviati has called his daughter, Luise a bitch” – we can read it as the summary of the fifth scene. Instead of the story and plot, we should concentrate on the model, and then everything is put together. Lorenzo de’ Medici, who is called nicely Lorenzino and then with his sarcastic nickname, Lorenzaccio – in case of Zsótér many times get ugly Hungarian translation of his name – is led by his moral idea, he has planned in total ideal and moral chaos, and then experiencing the uselessness of previous warnings he did the murder of his relative, of Alessandro de’ Medici, who is the tyrant of the city. With it he does not gain neither the freedom of Firenze, nor the peacefulness of his own: a useless puppet gets into the main position, he dies. (Among many well-known versions of Lorenzaccio, there are many, which try to show the main character as a real hero of freedom.)

But then get back to the gloves! Mária Ambrus’ set, which is pushed into the corner of the room, and Mari Benedek’s costumes are given mostly by the gloves industry. There is an unstylish stylish white chair, table and pale standing lamp with three branches, seems to come from the beginning of the 1960s: all disappear under a big pile of gloves and ocean of gloves. They are similar to convolvulus and seaweed, the red clematis with many fingers covers the play that way. There are gloves connected to one another, crocheted (or knitted) somethings are turning around the characters, they can express aristocratic elegance, red colour of whorehouse, hell of pool of blood. Almost everything is red, purple, reddish in connection with the piles: as well as the male and female costumes with principle and madness too, which are similar to tracksuit or night dresses with frenetic irony, and the objects too, which are used like a clown would use them and which can change their form and meaning (watering can, gladiolus and so on) too. The red string is the ruler (some characters grow the stock of gloves sometimes), the red rubber gloves with long fingers, which is pulled on head, can become mitre too. Other things, like the rubber gloves, which can be pulled up to a metre, can become the pulled out gut of the victim, it can make us frightened and laugh too.

It is not easy to compete with these dominant, perfectly expressive properties, with the set-costume-like amoeba of gloves, chameleon of gloves in this shining, mercilessly clever, clean, light, understandable, bitterly human performance. The actors of Maladype can do it. Since the pre-presentation in spring, the three men, two women cast has changed into four men and a woman. Kamilla Fátyol (Gabriella; citizen; Giomo; Alessandro courtier; Scoronconcolo; assassin) is punctual and expressive as well as her partners, it is good to see her contoured personality, but we have the impression anyway, that the interpretation, which does not need any gender connection, would require only male actors. Ákos Orosz with the determination of an intent nursed one, who is not ill at all, from the mental hospital, with frightening play of his eyes performs Lorenzaccio, who has sadly the sense of mission and anyway (and sinfully and in a bad way) he is vigilante. His one and many exercises form his broken personality. Zoltán Lendváczky (Maffio; citizen; Cibo Marchioness; Caterina Ginori; Lorenzo's aunt; Tebaldo; painter; Filippo Strozzi) he is a clown of the court connected to a conspirator, who can cheat any of his ruler, however, he does it with many mistakes. Zsolt Páll (Maurizio; member of the Eights Council; Lorenzo’s mother; Bindo; Caterina; Lorenzo's uncle) he is the bearded Don Quixote of relative respectability. Ádám Tompa (Alessandro de’Medici; prince; Cardinal; Pietro Strozzi; Cosimo de'Medici) moves with face of present, which is fixed into the history. The closeness into the corner from the point of view of Zsótér, can be maintained by the rich, balanced usage of narrow place, which is interpreted by expressive verbs, and by the illusion and vision of Italian painting. (Anyway, all of them are criers too: they announce the sometimes few seconds long scenes.) The scene of the Painter, the council of the Eights (there are three of them), their decision, the faceless oath and promises of the new tyrant under the red curtain of gloves, all these are the summary of the one and half hours long Lorenzaccio: these are the key moments of the whole Lorenzaccio. The stubborn, meaningless bad pronunciation of some Italian names, the sometimes distraction of the viewers’ attention from outside (the cobble can meow...) cannot ruin Musset by Maladype and Zsótér.

Tamás Tarján, Népszava online, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)