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REMEMBRANCE OF A LANDMARK IN THEATRE HISTORY
conveyed by mimics, posture, gesture and movement, which make visible the
inner (emotional and volitional) drives behind all utterances and the reactions
to three factors of equal importance in the production, “the spoken, the acted
or the spiritual shifts felt behind the words”.*”" This is how the opposition of
Kulygin, Masha’s husband and Vershinin, Masha’s lover comes out in several
scenes of the third act, openly but strictly beyond words, similarly to the
reasons for Solyony’s impertinence or Tuzenbach’s hyperactivity.
Acting is full of revelatory details: for example, after Olga mentions that
she has grown older and thinner, she suddenly throws away a pencil, which is
an obvious sign of her anger at the lack of reaction (the denial she may expect)
to her remark. When, laughing and suppressing her crying, she declares that
she is 28, she accidentally knocks her students’ exercise books off her desk,
touches her head in confusion, then bends down and picks up the books with
Irina, stating acquiescingly that “it’s all quite right, it’s all from God”. Faces
always function as a precise barometer of the inner world, and the usually
telling gestures that dominate alongside mimics unveil happenings not
always in direct connection to what has been said. “Although there is hardly
any contact in words, gestures and glances accurately reveal the shifts of
emotions in each character and the essence and changes of their relationships
with others.””” The subtly created inner life of the figures mostly erupts
into the surface like lava: not in direct replies, but as (neither inadequate
nor completely appropriate) reactions to things happening in later micro
situations. At the beginning of the production, for example, Olga breaks her
pencil after a cheeky remark by Solyony, and bursts into tears, but her anger
and desperation are much more strongly fueled by Masha’s intention to leave,
mentioned shortly before. In the third act, Olga begins to cry vehemently
when Kulygin arrives, but the expression of her tension is the result of a
previous dispute with Natasha. When emotions come out in a direct way,
much more rarely, of course, they come “elementally and unbridled, and the
others quickly hide them away from prying eyes”.°”?
As a result, indeterminacy dominates the construction of scenes, as
“everything is constantly in motion: in space, in intent, in emotion. Thus,
acting also alternates extremes of various moods, with the participants
seeking psychological authentication in every happening all the time".
Diction follows this alternation precisely, increasing “the prosaic mood” by
defusing lyrical-philosophical tirades “with a slightly stylized monotony”.*®
This is the most obvious in Laszlé Sinké’s way of speaking, who portrays
°4 Ibid.
922 Nánay: Változatok a reménytelenségre, 13.
Almási: Csoportkép búgócsigával, 7.
924 Sándor L.: Minden eltörölve?, 12.
925 Almási: Csoportkép búgócsigával, 7.
923
s 184