We can close this year's theater season with this diary of the Madman

We can close this year's theater season with this diary of the Madman
We can close this year's theater season with this diary of the Madman
Anonim

This year's opening performance of the Jurányi Incubator House is Diary of a Madman, directed by Viktor Bodó, with Tamas Keresztes in the lead role. The names are quite serious, but the historical theater background is also quite serious, which has plagued this play for almost exactly forty years, since the Pesti Theater opened with it in 1977, then István Horvai directed Iván Darvas.

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I don't know how much this fact may have depressed the creators, but I do know that this show will be as famous as its predecessor. If only because it's not even a performance, but a complete art festival, which Keresztes puts on the stage in an hour and a half (by the way, 35 minutes faster than his predecessor - irony!! - ed.). Circus and visual arts, concert and fair comedy, all the while sharp social criticism and deadly deep love drama, i.e. total madness itself, where madness=life. Or rather Life.

In Bodó's direction, Akszentyy Ivanovich Gogol's Poprischin, the hopelessly in love and noble-born official who wants to break out, is just an innocent and harmless observer of the crazy that the József Katona Theater actor brings to the role. He doesn't just want to show how the little man gets to the point where he is VII. Ferdinand, heir to the Spanish throne. Let's say it should be him rather than a woman.

There is a Popriscsin who is in love with the daughter of the dignified gentleman, and in this case Keresztes doesn't even look like himself. If we didn't know that we were in a theater and that it was a theater performance, we might think it was some kind of trick shot. Well, the lighting is also masterful, but you can't bring about this transformation with lights. The luck is that by the time we get to Popriscsin, who is in love, we already know Popriscsin, the musical clown, who with a loop improvises numbers for his audience that would hold their own on the main stage of any festival.

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However, Poprischin only tells what is happening around him. The fact that the talking dogs on the stage and the three-kopek theater come to life in the meantime doesn't bother him, and we fall from one craze to another, until schizophrenia takes over the madman, who at a certain point seems more like a genius, and VII. Ferdinand goes to the Napoleons. Too bad for him, he would have been a great king.

And fine art comes into play when Tamás Keresztes himself dreamed up this strange, movable set that serves as his modest room. It is as if it were an expressionist painting that flows towards the audience, but it never reaches it, because meanwhile our main character constantly varies it, makes use of even the smallest corners, which makes the whole thing even more surreal, fitting perfectly into the drama.

What would Gogol think if he saw this performance today? Presumably, you yourself would be surprised at the genius of Popriscsin's madness, and also at the way Keresztes reaches the most severe state of schizophrenia, because the most beautiful thing in the whole thing is the structure of the transformation, which the director obviously has a lot to do with. It would definitely surprise me if the show produced in collaboration between the Katona József Színház, FÜGE, the MASZK Association (Szeged) and Orlai Produkciós Iroda did not win all the awards that will be awarded in the 2016-2017 season. And yes, I mean Best Supporting Actress too…

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