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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. “© a Ss 398 . 88 +
