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FREEDOM FIGHT FOR LOVE, AN EXCELLENT FARCE AND SOME MUSIC BY LEHÄR
and Brissard) should be underlined with “playfulness, emphasis and tone”,
and the same should be done in case of the comic rendering of characters
“thinking in an unnatural and dishonest way”.* If actors do so, “both
performances will be partisan without giving the impression of distasteful
politicizing or updating”, therefore, it is also essential that “no exterior means
should be used to underline character impersonation and render a figure ina
partisan way”.*? Székely considered “some extra characterization” sufficient
— for example, a kind of exaggerated gesture, without ridiculing a figure or
creating his/her caricature®** —, which is “not yet something external, but
a slightly higher degree of emotion, slightly more characteristic means of
expressing emotions”.**> Andras Mik6 also stressed the identification with
the logic of another person — for example, with “logic gone awry” in case
of the President of the Tribunal — and the consistent conduct of action and
behavior it induces. After all, “if we find and create the logical line of a role, it
is impossible to play without criticism”.3%
However, most roles did not provide enough possibility for this creation and
the proposed way of acting, and except Kamill Feleki, hardly any actors diverged
significantly from all that their spectators were accustomed to and expected
of them. Not even Hanna Honthy, who got a role-type now that she played
“triumphantly throughout her old age. Then came The Csardas Princess and
from then on Hanna was the eternal youth, with a touch of piquancy, of course,
as she faced her age and laughed at it.”?”” According to a harsh interpretation,
which illustrates the supposed discrepancies of experience and declared
opinion that we encounter so often in the 1950s, Honthy rendered “the realistic
character of a mondaine matchmaker” convincingly, “inciting hatred against
the rotten bourgeois society that produced this immoral parasite”.*°* But
Honthy, whose greatest fear was that the audience would reject her if she played
a disagreeable woman,*” would not have been able to “incite hatred”, even if she
had wanted to. Furthermore, some critics slightly disapproved of her making
39:
S
Ibid., 46.
Ibid.
394 Tbid., 53.
395 Ibid., 54-55.
396 Tbid., 42.
#7 Venczel: Virágkor, Part 2, 41. — Cf. also "Her new role was the grande dame of operetta, who
holds all threads of the tale in her hands. She complicates the fine cobwebs, but also restores
them. She takes part in the plot, but also rises above it. She seems to be not only a prima
donna of the play, but also its deity. She is creating the fairy castle of the world of operetta,
its domes of thin air, its gardens of fantastic beads in front of our eyes, she is blowing the
firmament, the clouds and the sunshine of this whole empire like soap bubbles. Békeffy and
Kellér creates a role-type in which Hanna finally finds her home. Yes, that’s her, the grande
dame. Her Majesty, the Queen of Operetta.” Gal: Honthy Hanna, 608.
Gombos: Luxemburg grófja, 4.
399 Cf. Venczel: Virágkor, Part 2, 41.
39.
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398
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