Seemingly, the critics have been surprised by the choice itself: after Zoltán Balázs has gained his name by his unique ritual theatre with Ghelderode, Genet and Ionesco, and now what does he want to do with Ostrovsky who is an outstanding person of the Russian realism of the XIX. century?

The unusualness of the choice of the play is mentioned by all analysing writing in connection with The Tempest performance of Bárka and Maladype Theatre. The writers definitely mention this performance as a progress during the career of the director – everybody from different point of view of course. Tamás Koltai refers to the adjectives of his earlier writings which were about Balázs’ earlier works, when he talks about The Tempest: There is a dramatic composition instead of the pattern. There is a human experiment to grab human fates instead of the embroidery of style. According to Judit Csáki many things – almost everything – are there which we need not only to understand, but to be able to feel the greatness of the play, its raised tragedy, and its actuality which has effects even today. The critics notice and mention consistently the change and as a result of it there are many writings about this performance, as in case of Empedocles but even in case of Acropolis only fewer, many times in combative mood written reflections were published only.

Go back to Ostrovsky’s play: in connection with the emblematic masterpiece of drama literature (Koltai) László Zappe highlights that the play gets deeply into the Russian society of the middle of the XIX. century which is trying to get out of feudalism. Balázs Perényi’s analytic comment has already brought us closer to the nature of the direction: In Ostrovsky’s drama the visionary pictures, the imagined language, extremely tensioned scenes and extreme actions show the devastating tempest of soul that brings everything with it. Zoltán Balázs is characteristically that kind of director, who from one side goes stubbornly on his own way, from the other side he is consciously building and widening it, and which is hardly negligible for him as the leader of the troupe: he is continuously widening the possibilities of Maladype too. Next to Perényi, Gábor Pap emphasises the stubborn wanting of continuity, when during the introduction of his writing he talks about the strange, outside, almost divine optics, which is given to the viewers.

Pap similarly to the other performances, in The Tempest he can realise this almost Brecht-like tool of alienation. The illusion of watching in the film studio forms a nice distance between the viewers and the performance. The performance with the realistic recalling of the practical surrounding of a film shooting (the lighting technicians who are moving on camera cars, the marvellous lighting effects which are born in front of us and the strange effects of light, the emphasised costume-like costumes and the stressed set-like sets) seems to show off with its artificial style. According to Koltai’s summarised idea: It is a pure pseudo shooting in any film studio.

From there opera is only one leap away, the final genre of combination of extreme stylisation and fake realism. That is why Katya Kabanova by the Check Janácek, who based it on The Tempest, does not sound as pure background music, which must paint the characters’ feelings, moods, emotions (Perényi). According to Gábor Pap the combination with references to films means much more than this, as the biggest cheat of film art, which represents the realistic reality the most, it is the music, the music which sounds in the background. And really it is similar to the watching of any costume films.

According to Balázs Perényi the women seem to be the ancient pictures of each roles in Judit Gombár’s costumes, the men’s dresses are essential, as the dresses of figures on the cards. Tamár Tarján points to the similar direction: the same military like lines can be seen on the men’s and women’s dresses. The scissors have to cut only straight lines, and the needles march it. The costumes make us feel and analyse the same kind of overregulated rigid and cold world which is built by Zotlán Balázs. The frenetic set with its simplicity, the bridge which goes to nowhere, with the painted hills behind it, and the long-laid podium and the rigid landscape together with it are rich symbols too, they are the symbols of the stuck great decisions and jumps. (Zappe). According to Tarján the set can be made based on an early (the middle of the XIX. century) drawing by Csontváry. From Balázs Perényi’s point of view the wonderfully created prose-opera takes place in an expressionist painting of space or on the landscape of soul.

For this we need opera-like characters too. Judit Csáki emphasises that now we do not miss the showing of fates, however all through the performance the form language of there can be found in the foreground. Olga Varjú’s performing, who is always exciting, all writings appreciate: it is solid, hard, hypocritically ceremonial (Zappe), peacockish, a female great woman (Koltai). Next to the tyrannical mother and mother-in-law we can see the colourful, sensual woman (Csáki), the empress dowager-like, Kabanova, who is cheated by patient wickedness (Tarján). According to the summery of Gábor Pap the great woman is closer to Arkadina than to Bernarda.

Kátya Tompos’ play, who performs Kabanova’s daughter-in-law, quotes the symbol of death, the swan (Pap), her performance is ethereal (Tarján), fragile, fine, shaking (Zappe). Her stylised abstract death; it is a heroic picture – a light dressed woman upstairs in front of the gloomy sky -: it is pure Tosca (Perényi). For Tarján, her Russian good-bye song illustrates, on the language of musical notes, that immeasurable distance that divides her self-conscious, free desire for happiness, her self-acceptance from the others’ petty way of life.

Zoltán Balázs and the troupe of Maladype tell us mainly this fight between the passion from the deepness of slavery and freedom and the bossy, negligible outside world with demanding thinking, sophisticated culture of forms and punctual performance (Perényi). The performance is a reason by the truth of a person, who lives, fights his feelings rightfully and consistently – of the person who dies because of his one and only life (Tarján). And if we recognise it, we have not been so surprised why did they choose The Tempest this time.

Tamás Jászay, Revizoronline, 2007

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)