Nowadays I fearfully tell that for an artist it is good to be caught by passion, aesthetic things, their own worldview, maybe able to give something else besides the actuality of social life. Because an artist, with the God given talent in his hand, can complain into blind world with cathartic beauty from time to time about the pains of Hungarian reality, do not have to be surprised, if not so many things happen then. I mean by many things, those, which do not mean a lot from aesthetic point of view, but from human point of view they mean a lot, some kind of useful contents, which take root in the viewers.

Of course, nowadays many performances deal with social problems, but all of them seemingly stop somewhere in the middle, sooner or later, with the showing of the problems. It is not rare nowadays to deal with social life, but to be able to answer meaningfully to the questions; it is. Because after the half way, the paths of morals are coming. Being moral is not easy or contemporary today, and above it, who has needs to have an artist, who tell how to do things? I am not sure, that there are many of this kind. Anyway, if sometimes a performance appeared, which would be similar to Ernella’s at Wolf’s, which goes till the end on this road: then it is worth to take much care of it.

Szabolcs Hajdu, director does not fewer thing than to talk authentically about the social problems that are in connection with the Hungarian society, which is of course is not a unique performance on its own. But he does not only find these problems with good eyes (failing marriages, impatient parents, jealousy, passive aggression, emigration and so on), but he also shows some kind of useful alternative to survive, which is filled with that strong attitude to life, which may help us get out of that film by Béla Tarr, in which we are thought to live. It is enough to be able to call the performance of Ernella’s at Wolf’s an outstanding one.

“We try to talk about ourselves. [...] We are not special. Our problems are similar.” – the director tells ars poetic views in connection with the performance, and he is right, the story is very easy, the hidden secret is exactly here. With the Wolf family everything is in order, so nothing is in order: at the beginning of the performance, Wolf (Szabolcs Hajdu) is sitting on the armchair, and waiting, maybe anything else can happen in his life now, over the age of forty too. Eszter, his wife (Orsolya Török-Illyés) with endless maternal energy reads up again and again the same tale to their child, to Bruno (Imre Gelányi), who does not have any other desire to only those things happen, which he wants at that time. If it is peace than that. Because Wolf and Eszter are always fighting about the nature of children uprising naturally, and when they have argued enough, they try to get as much enjoyment as they can from that glass of vine, for which they have enough time. So the grey everyday is getting filled, when Ernella’s family appears suddenly, who arrive home from Scotland, where they have tried their fortune, but it was unlucky. Ernella (Erika Tankó) is Eszter’s sister, this relationship is a good reason for the two families to close themselves with each other for a while, and to let the enervated teasing start: jealousy, envy, their own child is of course always smarter than the other one, even if for the first time we deny him, because he is so uneducated. The bearable aggression and the superior cynicism, the skulking, the everyday cowardice can appear in the flat theatre of Maladype. We can see real characters of our everyday life, who can never have so enough of everything, that if they left once, would not come back once. They are characters, who always rolls their problems in front of them, and meanwhile they try not to think about them.

Szabolcs Hajdu’s staging does not push into the ground the characters, instead of it, he introduces them with some kind of forgiving goodwill: they are not pathetic, they are just fallible, they are not ridiculous, they are just funny. What is really interesting, that their lamentation and fighting are not aimless, as they get from A to B, and even if they do not, but they surely get closer to it. The whole performance is filled with some kind of positive desire to go on: when the Wolf and Ernella’s families have already been jealous enough and fighting around each other, they sit down for five minutes to watch the play, which the children perform them in the living room. Of course, they make it faster, as they do not have enough time for it, but for that five minutes, which are allowed, they put aside their over complicated problems – maybe they would be solved alone. It is not a big lesson, it is a fact, however, the performance can show it perfectly: because of its simplicity it seems to be useful, while the performance is a great theatrical experience too. The didactics lurk, then it bursts to the surface without any signs with frantic jokes and the performance is rich in it. The mirror does not bend, which he holds in front of us, he reaches anyway not to make us recognise at once the reflection of our own face on the everyday character: there is not any fake-self-critic laugh, as when we think, that we are laughing at someone else, then we are doing it with ourselves. By the time we have recognised ourselves, it is too late: without hypocritical preparation we are laughing at ourselves; and it is a very rare occasion.

The indisputable strength of the performance can be found anyway in the very strong, good sentences. Maybe for the first time, we laugh well at them, because of their familiar names, but if we think about them a little bit, we can recognise, that Szabolcs Hajdu and his troupe can grab something very essential with them. One of the final scenes is wonderful, when Wolf awkwardly tries to pay compliment to his wife, but without any better phrases he can just tell: “You are getting older beautifully.” Maybe no wife can get any truer compliment than this one.

Around the stressed sentences a minimalist theatre has been built, which can emphasize them. The set of the living room (Emese Moroncsik) can create a totally common, home-like atmosphere, we do not have to explain anything into it; as Ernalla’s family, now we are also closed together with the Wolf’s a little bit (or with ourselves). There is a vine glass on the table, in it there is weird, blue coloured vine, the bottle of the orange juice is painted totally green, there is a yellow lamp and red dust catcher: these are the basic colours of Lego, as this is a good type of theatre of symbols, where the sulky girl, Laura (Ágota Szilágyi) is also performed by adult actress, and she does it very well, as the others do with their own characters. The good one can be found not in the great amount of artistic solutions, but in their polished nature; when Domokos Szabó, who performs Ernella’s husband, Albert, is tense, not in an artistic way, but as a person from everyday life can be, when Szabolcs Hajdu signs with little movements of his arm, that how much vine, he would like to get, he does it as a real human one of flesh and blood. We can see pure, and because of it very authentic performance all through it; and of course we can tell, that as a father of a family, it is not so hard to perform an ordinary father of a family authentically, but there is Ágota Szilágyi and Imre Gelányi too, who perform as adults an incredibly authentic child characters; it is the well worked out theatre of their looks, their tensed muscles on their faces and tiny gestures, and because we can see it from close, it can effect very well.

However, sometimes some too slow and because of it boring moments make us remember the over-discussion of some real arguments, the calming atmosphere of the final scenes are pushed towards the kitsch by John Lennon’s Imagine, besides these we cannot find any other moments, which would be out of this finely worked out performance, which forms an excellent unit. “The things are around us here, we just have to grab them and tell them somehow” – the director says it, and after seeing Szabolcs Hajdu’s performance, we can be sure, that it can be somehow – that way.

András Soós, 7óra7, 2015

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)