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REMEMBRANCE OF A LANDMARK IN THEATRE HISTORY
still present in Jozsef Ruszt’s staging in Zalaegerszeg in 1985 too), nor even
the popular conception of Chekhov as a forerunner of the theatre of the
absurd, concretized in the drama of communicational deficiencies. Following
the dramaturg Géza Fodor’s precise analysis of the drama, the Katona’s
production was based on “the unbiased scrutiny of the dramatic micro¬
texture”.®*° It focused on the complex, “in-depth and original” reading of the
relationship of the characters”,®” and pushed events beyond words into the
foreground. One of its foreign reviewers rightly observed that “interpretation
is nothing more than theatrical nuance here, strictly within the framework of
the play, down to its smallest components”.**’ In addition to the astonishing
details thus created, the production was made really special by the suspension
of Peter Szondi’s well-known conception about Chekhov’s renunciation of
dramatic tension. The series of stage events were made particularly dramatic
here, similarly to the sudden escalation of situations. As a result, the tone
became “unequivocally tragic, despite occasional bursts of laughter”,®”? and
only some of the text’s latent comic elements were used (moderately, of
course) and others were inactivated.
Moreover, the mise-en-scéne made the few philosophical parts of the
dialogues sound trivial, at times ironic, and the lyrical parts emotionally
overheated, eliminating the possibility of sentimentalism, which is rather
seductive in Chekhov. “The means of performance highlighted the often
revelatory gestures of ‘bad moments’, incomprehension and confusion, which
formed the world of the drama.""" However, the characters did not renounce
making themselves understood at all, and they even seemed to understand
each other very well, but their attending to their own feelings and thoughts
hindered their powerful reactions, their help to the others. (For example,
Olga and Natasha were hindered in comforting Irina, stirred by Solyony’s
violent declaration of love, or Masha and Andrey, who had learned of the
conflict between Tuzenbach and Solyony, were hindered in preventing the
duel, the shooting of the baron.) Acting also made another novelty of the
play’s interpretation very spectacular, namely the nuanced portrayal of the
brutality of the figures, a mass of both wittingly or unwittingly uttered insults,
irritations and humiliations, to which the characters were reacting on the
level of metacommunication, and which were also wittingly or unwittingly
returned to each other. The constant presence of petty violence and vengeance
was cumulated in the last act, reaching its climax in the frenzy of the finale.
Thus the Katona’s Three Sisters concentrated its exceptional reading of
8% Heltai: Rimelések, 719.
897 (Torda): Három nővér. Katona József Színház, Ország-Világ, Vol. 30, No. 1, 1" January, 1986, 8.
898 The critic of the Israeli periodical Dávár was guoted in Koltai: Egy vendégjáték kritikái, 13.
899 Heltai: Rímelések, 724.
900 Tbid.
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