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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. 00 S 82 D 82: œ « 166 +
