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PATRIOTISM TURNED INTO SOCIAL ISSUE
IMPACT AND POSTERITY
The peculiarity of the production’s reception history is that Imre Kerenyi’s
mise-en-scéne could not “override” the other Stephen the King, the “decorative
mass event”,®”? which took on increasingly nationalistic and retro traits.
However, the National Theatre’s production received the so-called Niveau
Prize of the Ministry of Culture and remained in the repertory for several
seasons. In 1988, it had two consecutive guest performances at the Komische
Oper in Berlin, and when it travelled to the theatres of Baden, Cologne and
Pergine in 1990, it had already been performed more than 250 times in
Budapest.°”* Although a lady in a white dress threw an egg on the stage at
the premiere and ran away, and Péter Molnar Gal described the production
as a “typical scandal of our entertainment industry”, attributing its social
reception and success purely to patriotism and money, its long run secured
the rock opera’s place on the National’s stage for years. Istvan Iglédi, who
staged the other two parts of the “trilogy” of Levente Szérényi, Attila, the
Sword of God and With You, My Lord! at the Esztergom Castle Theatre and
the Szeged Open-Air Festival, produced a new mise-en-scéne of Stephen the
King for the millennium. This performance ran for twelve seasons at the
theatre still called the National at the time of the premiere but renamed some
months later as Pesti Magyar Theatre. It was at this point in time that the new
National Theatre was founded and began to be built.
However, it is the paradox of the play’s reception history that an
“intellectually so deep”*” a production as Kerényi’s staging, and so apt to
provoke a “horizon of change” (Hans-Robert Jauss), had not been born until
Röbert Alföldi’s mise-en-scene for the Szeged Open-Air Festival in 2013, for
the 30% anniversary of the world premiere. Moreover, Alföldi used the same
method as Kerényi: he unified the mosaic structure of the rock opera through
stage actions,*” and his mise-en-scéne entered into unwitting dialogue with
#3 Ibid.
#4 Seeing the ovation, Kerényi made Szörényi and Brédy create the rock ballad Anna Fehér
(sunk into oblivion by now), which opened on 21 September, 1988 at the National, exactly
three years after the premiere of Stephen the King, which was still being played. Before the
opening, there were some “previews” of Anna Fehér in the Carmelite courtyard of the Castle
Theatre and on the Cathedral Square in Szeged. Although a double album was also recorded
with the cast of the world premiere, the play did not make a success and it has not been
produced any more.
Imre Kerenyi’s expression in an interview given to Pesti Misor. Fabian: Istvan, a kirdly, 9.
Tamas Mészaros rightly noticed that “the structure of scenes in Stephen the King is that of a
dramatic oratorio; its figures get characterized not in the plot, but rather in their utterances.
You could say they live primarily in their numbers, in their vocals and not in the happenings.
The director [Imre Kerényi], however, in order to realize his ‘history play concept’, had to
develop an epic line that could be carried through, had to stretch an arc for the narrative, so he
had to cover the mosaic structure in the process of stage actions." Mészáros: Az ősi érdek, 7.
87.
a
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