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THE FINAL PERFORMANCE OF THE OLD NATIONAL THEATRE
IMPACT AND POSTERITY
Except for Svobodas impact, which worked independently of the performance,
Endre Martons King Lear did not have considerable influence on playing
Shakespeare in Hungary. Nevertheless, it soon became a legend, both literally
and figuratively, in program schedules and in aesthetics, being the final
performance of the old National Theatre. It was feeding the myth of the
“glorious palace of miracles”,** and also served as a motive to keep it alive for
long. It was this performance with which actors and audiences said goodbye
to the prestigious building of the former People’s Theatre (Népszinhaz), and
the memory of the twenty-seven minutes’ applause that sounded after the
last lines of the play, spoken among tears by Albany, that is Kornél Gelley,
is still vivid today.*®” Above all, even considering its somewhat ambivalent
innovations (stage design), the performance became the summary of a
bygone era of theatre, with a star casting.*® During its long run, it became
increasingly controversial, as this is indicated in the adverse reviews of the
1970s, which did not (or could not) refer to what is obvious today: as an
example of “contemporaneousness of the non-contemporaneous” (Reinhardt
Koselleck), the performance set a tearful memorial to past greatness in a time
when the future, the historically very productive endeavors of Péter Halasz,
István Paál, József Ruszt, etc. began to emerge.""
186 László Ablonczy: Sinkovits Imre az utolsó évadban: 1963/64. A Nemzeti Színház 175 éves
ünnepere, Hitel 25:12 (2012), 56-59.
#7 On 28'* June, 2014, on the 50th anniversary ofthe event, for example, acommemoration was
held at Jökai Theatre in Békéscsaba, with the participation of Laszlé Kudelka, stage manager¬
in-chief at the old National Theatre.
It is far from a development in the history of effect, but we should also take into account that
the ideal abstracted from "the National Theatre led by Major, Marton, later [László] Vámos,
[Ferenc] Sík, [László] Ablonczy", among others, i.e. "the dominance of great actors, theatre
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managers and literary valuable dramas with strong moral values in moderate staging",
became widespread in a whole series of productions around 2010. Produced primarily in
rural theatres (e.g. in Szolnok, Békéscsaba, Eger), these productions wish to replace a theatre
culture declared defunct in Budapest, and, in contrast to directors theatre, they try to
restore “the respect for tradition and greatness”, with “real, traditionally large-format acting
performances”. Jozsef Kiss: Vitaindité tanulmdny a pesti szinhazakrol, http://magyarteatrum.
hu/kiss-jozsef-vitaindito-tanulmany-pesti-szinhazakrol (accessed 28 December 2015).
Cf. “After 1968, during the 1970s, Hungarian theatre was transforming. The theatre of great
actors became a director’s theatre. MGP [Péter Molnar Gal] did not realize what was happening
at the time. He saw, of course, that even the theatre of Ottó Ádám was becoming empty,
but he did not realize that he had to side with the processes that unfolded in rural theatres,
coincidentally, around the directors of my generation. And that you had to side guite simply
489
because in contrast to an empty theatre culture, the future belonged to those processes, because
those processes were productive. Of course, the new comes with losses in life. Directors theatre
had brought the great surplus that a theatre production became a work of art and meaningful
as a whole. It had brought the complexity of theatre as previously unknown. But it had also
brought losses, the greatest of which was the regression of acting creativity, the extinction of
great actors." Géza Fodor: , Nincsen két mérce". Fodor Géza levelei Petrovics Emilnek, Holmi
24:7 (2012), 864. (My italics — Á.K.K.)
+ 104