Three people have been needed to make it possible to us to see the story of rise and fall of Richard III, English king in Maladype Theatre. First of all, we should mention William Shakespeare, who formed the script in 1593, which was about the actions, which happened 100 years before the writing of it and put the main character, Richard III king, who failed in the battle of Bosworth in 1485 into the centre. Sándor Zsótér, the director and Zoltán Balázs, the actor – director, who performs the king, use this story in 2016, who perform this performance in the flat on Mikszáth Square, which is the home of Maladype Theatre, about which this review is written. The hidden background character of this performance is Ede Szigligeti, with the translation of whom Shakespeare’s play could be published first in Hungarian language in 1878. In the 20th century István Vas also translated the play, the characters of it can tell his words on Hungarian stages today, his words are there in the viewers’ ears today.

In comparison with Isván Vas’ translation, Szigligeti’s text is less brilliant, it is rougher, the words have an old-styled feeling, the turnings are not obvious. Maybe that is why, Szigligeti’s words can get deeper into the Nothing, from which Richard III desperately tries to escape, but as we can know it well, he does it for nothing. More he tries to get out, the deeper and deeper he gets into it, and he pulls the whole court with himself.

Richard III’s crippled form is the cliché of the western theatrical culture. Seemingly there is not any more valid source than his own words. He tells about himself, at the beginning of the play, that "I am not shap'd for sportive tricks, / Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass". After it he uses the personal pronouns of “I” again and again, he stresses that bad impression of him: "I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;". In an English film, which was made in 1955 and can be watched on YouTube, Laurence Olivier could show with classical perfection the unscrupulous crippled careerist, who swore to evil actions.

The Hungarian translation cannot express that social emptiness which is made by the “I”, which returns again and again in his self-confession, as in Hungarian language there is only one word for the “I”, while in English both “I” and “me” can refer to first person singular. The “I” is the one, who does not care about the others, and goes on unscrupulously, while “me” is the mark of the I that is formed in the others, which can restrict and rule the unrestrained and unscrupulous “I” and order him towards the common aim.

In the play, this unscrupulous I can be heard, who does not know any limits, when we can hear the complaining words of Richard III of the future, that "I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks”, "I, that am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty", ‘I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion”, "I am subtle, false, and treacherous".

In the Maladype Theatre in the role of Richard III, Zoltán Balázs tells those words, which show his physical appearance negatively, but the prince, who can be seen does not similar at all to the one, he is talking about. It is good to look at Zoltán Balázs, his body is not silly, he is not ugly, watching him with others’ eyes, the gracefulness of the handsome outlook is in him, which he does not want to realise in himself.

By the showing of Richard III as a sensual, attractive body, that expresses sexual power, Zsótér and Balázs leave the traditional cliché of the usual performances of the play, which parasitizing on the vision of crippled nature from outside, and lead the viewers that way to that not so original conclusion of the crippled nature of power.

The situation is very different, if the prince’s crippled nature is just an imagined one, the vision of the “I”, which has been formed to become the driving power of the will of the kingdom. The prince says, that he wants to become a villain, but in reality, he wants the power, which cannot be connected neither to the moral schema of wickedness nor to the goodness.

Max Weber says about the power, that it is “legitimate physical violence”, with other word it is the right of murder. Who can kill in everyday live (or can have someone killed), that leaves the order of life, he commits crime and loses his right to live. It is not true in connection with the sovereign ruler, who can kill and have someone killed, as Carl Schmitt tells it, he is outside the rules, but he is connected to it anyway, as he is the one, who decides who are the necessary friends to keep up the order and who are the enemies, who frighten it.

The power is the state of unpunished sinfulness, which has overwhelming attractive power for those, whose ego cannot accept the yoke of order, and who want to form the order according to their own ideas. Some can do it, the others cannot.

Shakespeare’s case study is about an unsuccessful experiment. According to Zsótér and Balázs’ interpretation, the starting point of this unsuccessful experiment is not the deformity of the body but of the soul, which cannot bear the mirror, and does not know any measures except of himself. The perversity is the source of the beauty and the gracefulness of the performance, which does not come from the prince’s, later king’s body, but his ego. This ego does not know himself, but he can recognise and use very precisely the others’ weaknesses. With the contemporary terminology we could tell that Richard III has a borderline personality, about whom the modern psychology tells that he is handsome and charming, who escapes from himself and searches for the others, uses them, destroys them, until he himself gets to the end of the line and dies early.

There is not any break in the performance. Zoltán Balázs, the prince, and later the king is always on the stage. He can see through everybody. As a great technician of power he can lie to be a friend, lover, while he does not have any friends just enemies, who he kills with tricks and violence one by one. The court appears as a strange company, where the members of the court are going up and down around the main character. Some of them are crippled, the others are not, but there is not any, who can see through the things, who can understand, that what kind of fate is waiting for them, after they have finished their tasks, which the prince (later the king) wants them to do. Both men and women get trapped. Clarence believes that he is Richard’s loving brother. Hastings, York, Buckingham die, because they misunderstand Richard’s real aims. Anna believes, that Richard loves her, however she is mourns her husband, who was killed by Richard. Elizabeth believes that Richard had her children killed because he wants to make her daughter a queen as his wife, that way. Margit is the only exception, the widow of the killed Henry VI, who is performed fantastically by a man, by Sándor Márkus, according to the traditions of Shakespeare-like performance.

An amazing moment of the performance is the scene of reconciliation, when the possibility of balance appears, but it disappears at the same time. The court comes together around the dying king Edward, and everybody holds loving hand to the others. The troupe can perform this scene with blood-curdling humour, about which it is obvious, that the reconciliation is just a camouflage. Richard goes on with the fight for the power. The king dies, but he does not reach out for the crown. He does the same as before: he cheats his surroundings. He pretends not to be interested in the power, he thinks it to be a fussy burden, he would change the real solitude of his cell in the monastery, where he can freely talk to God, with the social loneliness of the throne. He cannot stand up against the urging, he makes himself crowned. He becomes a king, but a fallen one.

The source of Richard’s tragedy is the overpowered nature of his soul. The end comes when he realises that his ego is empty. While he has known everybody, nobody can know him. This becomes his real disability that is why he has to imagine, that his body “has an ugly outlook”, and that he is made “without the gracefulness of charm”. In the performance of Maladype Theatre, according to Zsótér and Balázs’ interpretation, Richard III’s tragedy is his lack of self-knowledge. As the lively denial of the idea of the disabled body, he fights bravely in the battle of Bosworth, and he can win if there was anybody, who could win in him. But there is not. He is not. He asks that: “Am I afraid of myself?”, and he answers that: “There is nobody else here”.

Richard fell as a king. The genesis of his sins is his fall. His acts become sins, because he could not keep the order, in which he was the king. He has become a villain, but not because he wanted it, but because he did not have power to leave himself, and to find a bridge to the others, whose obedient will his ruler one could rely on.

The performance of Maladype goes even further. The place of the performance is the living room of a flat. The characters come in from a bedroom, and they go out into a hall, or the other way around. They are similar to a family. They do not have royal dresses, or the ones from a court. Their tools are alarmingly everyday like. Zoltán Balázs blows soap bubbles, the assassins kill with toy swords, the martyr princes are playing with rubber dinosaurs.

We are the family of York.

György Csepeli, Mozgó Világ, 2016

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)