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PATRIOTISM TURNED INTO SOCIAL ISSUE
DRAMATIC TEXT, DRAMATURGY
The musically rather eclectic play, containing 4x7 numbers, which combine
rock with melodies of church and folk music,*° unfolded as a “drama of
conscience”®™ with tight logic in the production of the National Theatre.
The interpretation of Stephen the King was adapted to the (relatively poky)
conditions of the building at Hevesi Sandor Square, not only providing a
chamber-theatre version of the shows in the City Park and in Szeged, but
also, as a novelty, exploring the drivers of the situations behind every song.*””
On the one hand, the mise-en-scéne approached the rock opera from the
issues in Shakespeare’s history plays,* and on the other hand, it included
Stephen the King in a series of Hungarian historical dramas (by Gyula Illyes,
László Németh, Magda Szabó, András Sütő, János Székely, etc.), freguently
played by the National and other theatres.?! Accordingly, it focused on the
struggle of the title hero, shifting the emphasis from Koppány to Stephen.
“This Stephen has remorse. The one who entered King Hill in the City Park,
did not have much then.”#® The 1983 “breakthrough performance”#? and the
film had become Koppäny-centric because of three reasons. Firstly, Koppäny,
the rebel had been portrayed as a quasi-freedom fighter. Secondly, he and
820 The structure of the rock opera is determined by the fact that it was written for a musical
film and the soundtrack was intended to be released on a record. Cf. “The success of the
1981 concert film Illes [about the famous beat band] made it possible for Gábor Koltay to
make another musical film. However, the scenario was not taking shape at all. In the end,
we realized that we were musicians, so we should think about records. A double album has
four sides, so the story had to be divided into four parts. A side takes about 20 minutes, so
the length was given," says [János Brödy]. This recording became the basis for what he called
an open-air spectacle that the film was made about.” Déra Matalin: A magyar rockopera:
István, az első és utolsó, http://nol.hu/kultura/20100821-istvan__az_elso_es_utolso-779481
(accessed 1 August 2017).
Koltai: Reálpolitika, 921.
A critic rightly noticed that “the sequence of scenes loosely stitched together from musical
numbers has become a drama now, at the hands of Kerényi and Novak”. Takacs: A déntés
drámája, 6.
Stephen the King was connected to the National Theatre’s cycle of history plays created
at that time in a special way. Imre Kerényi had staged Diirrenmatt’s King John, based on
Shakespeare’s play, at the Castle Theatre a year before, which was followed by his productions
of Richard II and Henry V, and Laszl6é Vamos’s staging of Henry IV. Kerényi saw the play of
Szörényi and Bródy as a "deep well" as Shakespeare’s works. “There are several layers of what
is happening: the acceptance of a new ideology and new customs, struggle, death and the
birth of a new country. Just instead of speaking we sing and express dramatic twists and
turns with movement and gestures.” (Fabian: Istvan, a kirdly a Nemzetiben, 9.)
This series of dramas offered not only a “vision of Hungarian history, but also an experience
of the movements and influencers of this history”. (Fabian: Leng a zäszlö, 5.) - It is worth
noting that the dramas about King Stephen, the most famous of which is Magda Szabo’s That
Beautiful Bright Day and Jézsef Ratké’s Help the King, usually dramatize a different situation
in history as well as in personal life than the rock opera.
825 Mészáros: Az ősi érdek, 7.
86 Fabian: Istvan, a király a Nemzetiben, 9.
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