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A BITTER FARCE OF LOSING POLITICAL IDEALS
figure and all Shakespearean Queen Mothers”.’”” They praised Zoltan Nagy
for the Cardinal’s dressing and undressing (when John offered England to
the Church in his exasperation) as a scene of clownery in all sincerity.’”*
They also mentioned Zsigmond Fülöp as Philip, the needy King of France,
who was “carrying on with power politics with lip blush and eye shadow”.”*
But the restraint of the ironic approach and the nuances of ensemble acting
were badly damaged during the long series: Tamas Koltai, who reviewed
the production for a second time, four years after the opening, noted that
“the production has already disintegrated in a frightening way”.”*
STAGE DESIGN AND SOUND
The strong atmosphere of the production was created not so much by the
costumes representing a past era but by Attila Csikds’s relatively simple
scenery and the cold lights.’” The background of the performance space was
closed by a wooden plank as a castle wall with crenels, a winged door in the
middle and stairs on both sides leading to the walkway. “A smooth floor” was
spreading in front of the battlements, “like an icy surface”,”’ with a ramp
leading to the depths of the proscenium, and pieces of furniture (a round
dining table, some seating, a wooden tub, etc.) were only temporarily pushed
into the empty space. The accentuated materiality and form of the elements of
the set simultaneously evoked Peter Brook’s mises-en-scéne of Shakespeare’s
tragedies and Giorgio Strehler’s mises-en-scene of the Bard’s history plays."
Their simplicity and functionalism did not reinforce Zsuzsa Borsi’s costumes,
which suited the historical milieu.
792 Mészáros: A korszerűtlen ésszerűség, 7.
Almási: Példabeszédek, 7.
Mészáros: A korszerűtlen ésszerűség, 7.
Koltai: Újranéző, 45.
Cf. “With a slight exaggeration, the Castle Theatre has been agonizing for many years,
looking for its own possibilities. But at long last, it has a production now that is typical of
this space and can become inseparable from this building. It is important that after so many
inorganic sets, independent of the possibilities and features of the building, after so many
superficial designs, the performance space of King John is indeed the result of the challenge
provided by this particular stage." György: Fejezet a zsarnokságról, 8.
Takacs: ,Egy Pembroke az eredmény!”, 6.
Specifically, Brook’s King Lear, which had a guest performance in Budapest in 1964 and
Strehler’s two-evening production of The Game of the Powerful, staged in Milan (1965),
Salzburg (1973) and Vienna (1975), and based on the first Henriad. On the stage of King
John, the “throne” seemed as simple a stool as it had been in Strehler’s staging, and “there
was something insincere in the production, which somewhat reminded spectators of a poor
circus; the slightly ridiculous king, the fearsome, yet buffoon-like Powerful, who are as
fearful as wild animals in a circus”. Giorgio Strehler: Az emberi szinhdzért, trans. Gitta
Kardos — Maria Lajos — Andras Schéry, Budapest, Gondolat, 1982, 375.
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