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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 microtexture”.®*° 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. «180 +
