The excellent film director, Szabolcs Hajdu, who has announced, that for a while, he would not direct any films in Hungary and emigrates, now he has presented a new theatrical performance on the Base of Maladype. The actors have put their own experiences into the text of the performance of Ernella’s at Wolf’s. The powerful performance is about emigration and the difficult existence here in Hungary, about the conflicts of personal life too.

A big flat is the base of Maladype Theatre on the Kálmán Mikszáth Square of Budapest. They have had to cram here for example the garden of night from the Marriage of Figaro in imagination, or an inner side of a castle, and even a battlefield in the King Ubu. Now Szabolcs Hajdu, the internationally appreciated film director, who sometimes works in theatres too, in the performance of Ernella’s at Wolf’s uses the flat absolutely as a flat, where a civilian family lives, mother, father and their naughty son, named Bruno. It is not important, what they do, they seem to be someone from outside, whose lives are successful, they have jobs, good existence and their private life is seemingly happy too.

In reality, we are sitting in the life of the Wolf’s family, as we are around the stage. Hajdu shows an absolute close picture about this family. We are so close to the characters that we can almost see inside their poles too. They try not to show themselves as characters, they simply exist here. When we enter the place of performance, Orsolya Török-Illyés, who performs Eszter, the mother, is reading a tale to the kid, who is performed by Imre Gelányi. But it can be felt at once, that this tale telling is not so joyful. It is a monotonous murmuring, with repeated sentences, without any important mimics and gestures, as the mother’s mouth seems to be moving just as a habit. We cannot feel that Bruno would enjoy it, he seems to be in strict cramp, he is staring at his mother motionlessly, what is happening is just routine, it is not good to anybody. It gives the basic atmosphere to the performance, in which we can see again our own everyday sufferings. The fact, that we cannot deal well with our relationships, we many times feel emptiness, we think that we are insatiable victims, we are struggling and struggling, we can get to the second stage from the first one.

Hajdu performs the father, he is enervated, he is a nervous educated man, who is jealous of his own son. He has the feeling that he gets his wife’s attention from him. He is arguing, he is unsatisfied, he gets angry and shouts too. The wife feels that her husband does not take care of her, he does not love her any more, she is thinking about of announcing that she wants to get divorced, but she cannot decide it. This performance is mostly about the impossibility of decision. About the fact, that we want to get away from that situation, in which we are, but we are unable to get out of it. Above all, into this situation arrives the sister’s family on the wife’s side, suddenly. They wanted to get out of that they were in. They went to Scotland the husband told everybody that they would not come back to Hungary for ten years, he scolded the country with cursing but then they are here again. But they have no place to live, that is why they get to their relatives.

They did not find their place abroad, in Hungary if they had, they have not had it yet, they have become drags on their relatives’ neck, and they deepen more the already existed conflicts.

Erika Tankó performs the sister, Ernella, she is the point of collision, she tries to activate herself, she tries to reconcile, she quarrels, but meanwhile she is hopelessly frightened. The husband, who is performed by Domokos Szabó, tries to pulls himself into the background, he tries to avoid conflicts, but he cannot, because while here everybody is moving in the still water, there are conflicts on one another. Ágota Szilágyi as a ten-years-old little girl, is hurt a little bit, she is a touchy child. Most of the everyday situations can turn into absurd ones, so we can laugh a lot. However, sometimes the silent periods are frozen, the looks can kill, the tension always threatens with explosion. There is not any real big explosion, as it would result in important change, but the characters are unable to provoke them after all.

The still water, the boredom of life, the life that is hardly bearable remain. Ernella’s at Wolf’s is a bitter picture, which has been formed based on the common texts of the characters, maybe that is why they feel it to be their own so shockingly.

Gábor Bóta, Népszava, 2015

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)