One
picture: at the back of the stage stands Anna Báthory dressed in white.
She's in prison. She is surrounded by narrow sliding doors, their
shadows on her body seem like the gratings of the prison. Behind her
the yellow, burning sun is taking shape. Anna Báthory is a witch. She
bewitched the prince of Transylvania, and now he is standing outside,
supplicating for her love and for giving him a baby. Gábor Bethlen
tears open the prison doors, the girl stands in clear, white light. In
the foreground of the stage appers Zsuzsanna Károlyi, the wife of the
prince in silver-mooncoloured dress: "Am I the shadow of the sun?" The
shadow of the prince. Bethlen disappears, the two women are watching
each other for a moment.
The power and beauty of the new premiére of the Janus University
Theather are in the stagepictures. In the small space the artistic set
of József Werner creates easily the locales of the performance. The
pieces of the stage are seem to be simple, but with excelent lighting
the director, János Mikuli composed beautyful pictures. The text of
Sándor Venyige is built up from short scenes with two or three actors.
The situations are mostly inexact, not elaborated, just as the
characters. So the filling of the characters are waiting for the
actors. The folkish duo of Uncle Bandi Fekete and Ferenc Köles is the classic example of how
should individual humour show through stereotyped figures. The
exaggerated hungarianing of Hommonay György played by Norbert Ács, and
the caricature of the court intriguers of Péter Vidéki and László Inhóf
are also quite ironic. As much as theese characters are overstated,
tries to take his role seriously András Ernő Tóth, playing Gábor
Bethlen, and either the two women, (the wife of the prince and the
witch), Andrea Kalocsai and Timea Szabados. But neither the text, nor
the stage situations let them create the possibility of drama
built on the pschyological way of acting. I could not determine exactly
where the problem is, the story, the text, the directing or the acting
is not well-elaborated enough for real drama, and I also have no idea
if this demand could be formulated in the case of this
performance.
pupet