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THE FINAL PERFORMANCE OF THE OLD NATIONAL THEATRE Intense verbality, the beautiful arrangement of tones provides the performance’s framework, despite the completely diverse styles of the actors. The performance is well rounded.*” STAGE DESIGN AND SOUND The influence of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s guest performance was most visible in the external elements, in the stage design, which was “monumentally grim””* and created “a feel that was both ancient and modern”.*” Josef Svoboda’s stage setting, operating with abstract spatial components and appearing more architectural than representative, was a real curiosity in the context of the contemporary expectations of the audience. It did not comply with the traditions of the Lear-performances of the previous decades (staged by Béla Both, Antal Németh and Sandor Hevesi before him), which were “chronicler-orchestrated”, revealing a “historical and fairy-tail splendor”.“ The essentially empty stage was divided by “metal cubes, open at the bottom”, that descended from above (in different configuration for each scene), and “cold spotlights” emanated from them or from between them that cut the darkness of the stage into parts.*”” Acting proceeded “between these smooth, powerfully simple arrays and below the closed lights bursting from the columns moving up and down”,*” but the scenery (albeit no one mentioned it regarding the 1964 premiere, the recording clearly shows it) lived a virtually independent life.” Not simply because it had neither illustrative nor interpretive functions, but because, in the spirit ofthe visual habits ofthe very pictorealism that Svoboda just tried to eradicate, the extras (torchbearers, 473 Nádas: Nézőtér, 16. 44 Antal: A Lear kirdly, 24. #5 d.t.: Lear király, 2. 176 Gyárfás: Épülő színház, 8. Nagy: A magyar Lear királyról, 9. — The reviewer makes it clear that these are "more reminiscent of the metal sheets in the English production than they should be", nevertheless they are "lucky tools for rapid scene changes". (Ibid.) Hámori: Lear király, 6. The reason that the TV recording confronts us with a completely decayed performance may be the disappearance of the freshness and the rhythm of the ten-year-old mise-en-scéne. In terms of the visuals, the disintegration can be due to the fact that the production planned for the Blaha Lujza Sguare building was forced to be played in different spatial and technical conditions. (First in the provisional home of the National Theatre in Nagymezö Street, then in their permanent theatre building on Hevesi Sandor Square.) If we compare the only scene photo of the 1964 performance, which spectacularly shows the proxemic composition of “the rings of lights and the ponds of shadows” (Gyarfas: Epiilé szinhaz, 8.), with the small place and neutral lighting effects that can be seen in the TV recording, it becomes clear that there was barely anything left of the well-conceived images over time. 477 478 479 + 102 +
