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A REFASHIONED IMAGE OF REVOLUTION AS MUSICAL THEATRE
STAGING
Spectators’ attention was drawn to the mise-en-scéne, which laid the ground
for director’s theatre in playing operettas, by its high standard. Regietheater
became prevalent in Hungarian theatre culture too because of the influence
of foreign directors with considerable theoretical and practical work, but it
began to influence staging musical comedies only in the 1950s, largely due
to the aspirations of the Operetta Theatre led by Margit Gäspär.’”! Students
of Vienna was conceived in the spirit of a strong concept already made clear
in its dramaturgy and the whole performance subordinated to it, while no
particular directorial style determined it. However, Endre Marton’s name —
since he was watching Max Reinhardt’s rehearsals in Vienna for a year at the
beginning of his career — was a guarantee of Regietheater, and he was not
considered a simple craftsman of light opera, such as Vilmos Tihanyi, who
staged nearly a dozen performances at the Operetta Theatre led by Szabolcs
Fényes. Margit Gaspar’s attention may have been drawn to Marton by his
staging of Baby Hamilton in the Vig Theatre in June 1948, a musical comedy
(after an American play) with Jenö Horvath’s music (compiled similarly to the
music of Students of Vienna) and by his principles as a director.” What critics
7 An example of Gaspar sheds light on the way Regietheater could affect playing operettas.
She mentions Marriage Market, Victor Jacobi’s very popular operetta, which was reworked
by Szilárd Darvas and set on stage by Gyorgy Nagy in Kecskemét in 1954. “There’s a scene in
act two, where the heroine decides to run away with Tom. According to the reshaped text,
she says, there’s an island near here, we’re going to leave the ship, get in a boat and escape.
[...] Then comes the famous song that begins with ‘Tele van az élet rejtelemmel’ (Life is full
of mystery). It is a beautiful piece of music, but it is typically the kind of operetta song, full
of untrue sentimentalism, that is difficult to stage so as to have a current meaning. But the
director solved the problem. After the young people have decided to escape, the heroine
comes on stage alone [...] and brings what she thinks suitable equipment for a desert island:
a vanity case, a colorful hat box, a white coat and a tennis racket. Because a millionaire girl
can’t take a step without a hat box and a tennis racket! Then she puts down the hat box, sits
on it and sings, ‘Life is full of mystery’. It is a nice idea of a director, since it deprives the
situation of all its damnable sweetness. [...] This is an excellent example of how much truth
a director can add to an old operetta to set it right.” (Gaspar: A kénnyti miifaj kérdései,
17.) Displacing a seemingly unambiguous situation, making it unique and playing with its
overtones — it all began in the staging of operettas in the 1950s, it became a sophisticated
method for “doublespeak” twenty years later, as in the legendary production of State
Department Store, directed by Tamas Ascher in Kaposvar, in 1976, and it still determines
operetta performances of innovative character from Istvan Verebes’s Victoria (Szigligeti
Theatre, Szolnok, 2000) to Péter Gothar’s Marriage Market (Szeged Open-Air Festival, 2013)
and Kriszta Székely’s Bluebeard (Budapest Operetta Theatre, 2018), for example.
Marton “was basically a director. He had learnt what to do as a director. A detailed analysis
of the play to determine the task. And to place the performance both in the age in which it
takes place and in our own time as well. [...] Marton understood the role of the director in
creating a performance at the Vig Theatre, which was based on the practice and traditions
so far. The actors understood and knew what they were doing. The director’s task is to create
the comfortable physical position and environment of the actors on the basis of an accepted
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