Seite 120 [120]
THE DRAMA OF INCOMPLETENESS DECLARED TO BE COMPLETE
STAGE DESIGN AND SOUND
The scenography followed Weiss’ scene description, but it was more detailed
and allowed for an unconventional association. It also drew the attention of
the spectators to the main characters and the ensemble at the same time. After
moving out of the old building on Blaha Lujza Square and before moving into
the building on Hevesi Sandor Square, the scenery had to be adapted to the
cramped stage of the theatre at 22 Nagymez6 Street, a temporary home of the
National Theatre. It made the bath hall of the asylum precisely recognizable.
The back of the stage was closed by a dark wall stretching high above,°” in
front of which a gangway with metal railings was running at a height of
about two and a half meters. “Peter Weiss perfectly dictated the set of the
play. Marton came up with a corridor for this, where Roux, the revolutionary
priest is standing, so that Marat’s truth can always get in the foreground, if
necessary, without disrupting the unity of the stage.”°”? Underneath, curtains
lined the showers and left the center of the stage empty for mass scenes.
Marat’s bath stood on the right and Sade’s armchair on the left. There was
a wooden dais for Coulmier and his family behind the chair, and the four
singers sometimes retreated in front of the stage platform to show the scenes
behind them.
The horizontally and vertically detailed stage set, designed by Matyas Varga,
not only separated and connected various parts of the stage spectacularly
and effectively,°”* but also conjured up the concentration camps, the “gas
chambers of Auschwitz camouflaged to be bathrooms”.®*” This is why many
people may have come to believe that there were four layers (aspects) of the
drama: in addition to the time of the spectacle in Charenton and the time
of the revolutionary events recalled there, i.e. 1808 and 1793, written on
wooden plates hanging high, the Second World War and problems of “the
most contemporary world of today”.°” And that is why a spectator might have
mentioned that “in scenes where nurses sadistically jumped on the mentally
ill, l think everybody was thinking of Nazi lagers, death factories”.*”” (Among
Nelly Vägö’s costumes from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the
butcher’s aprons of male nurses were the most likely to help this association.)
6” Cf. “For our country, as for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the stage at Berlin’s Schiller
Theater was exemplary. The essence of Weiss’ set is a very high wall with tiny tiles, which
is both the wall in front of which people are shot in the back ofthe head or the wall ofa gas
chamber in Auschwitz and also the wall of a hospital for hydrotherapy. It is the wall of all of
us from the 20" century.” Molnar Gal: Rendelkezöpröba, 145.
Lelkes: A sokdimenziós színpad, 12.
574 Cf. Gábor: Színházi figyelő, 236.
575 Mihályi: A kegyetlenség színházától, 616.
Zsugán: Az egyetlen választás, 2.
G. Szabó: Bírál a postás néző, 3.
57.
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