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THE TRAGIC OF “VITAL HATRED”
GABOR SZEKELY: THE MISANTHROPE, 1988
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Title: The Misanthrope. Date of Premiere: 11° November, 1988. Venue:
Katona Jézsef Theatre, Budapest. Director: Gabor Székely. Author: Moliere.
Translator: Gyorgy Petri. Dramaturg: Géza Fodor. Set designer: Csaba
Antal. Costume designer: Gyorgyi Szakacs. Company: Katona Jozsef Theatre,
Budapest. Actors: Gyorgy Cserhami (Alceste), Dorottya Udvaros (Céliméne),
Gabor Maté (Philinte), Géza Balkay (Oronte), Agnes Bertalan (Eliante), Erika
Bodnar (Arsinoé), Zoltan Varga (Acaste), Janos Bän (Clitandre), Jözsef Horvath
(Du Bois), Frigyes Hollósi (Basgue), Olivér Csendes (Guard).
CONTEXT OF THE PERFORMANCE IN THEATRE CULTURE
The Misanthrope was created during the period of outstanding international
successes of the Katona Jézsef Theatre, as the last mise-en-scéne by Gabor
Székely there, who managed the company from 1982 to 1989. It exemplifies
the professional perfectionism and latent political character of the Katona’s
productions staged in the “Székely era”: the determination of a theatre
which did not avoid social problems and dared to analyze them in the public
sphere, as sensitively as possible, in order to influence collective thinking
about them. Shortly before the regime change, at the end of a decade far
from revolutionary, it made moral corruption going hand in hand with social
degradation the subject of “doublespeak”, judging our social conditions
through a tolerated classic, mostly appealing to overtones, in the robe of
historicist staging.?** The vitality of the pronouncement and the intensity of
°44 ‘There was a reviewer who defined the subject of Alceste’s vehement hatred (in a rather clichéd
way) in “a world that swept away all ideas, ideals, opinions and beliefs". (Erika Szántó: Karzat,
Képes 7, Vol. 3. No. 49, 3 December, 1988, 43.) Others pointed out more precisely that the
production was about “the most pressing problems of our individual and social actions”
(András Barta: Alceste, korunk hőse, Magyar Nemzet, Vol. 51, No. 309, 294 December, 1988,
9), "the decay of our mental health" (Tamás Koltai: Újranéző, Képes 7, Vol. 4, 14, 84 April,
1989, 43) and “the consensus on opportunism" (Miklós Almási: Szeressétek az embergyűlölőt!,
Népszabadság, Vol. 46, No. 285, 304 November, 1988, 7). Tamás Tarján also made it clear
that "György Cserhalmi plays Alceste, while he plays hundreds and hundreds of figures of
contemporary Hungarian intellectual and public life". Odi et amo, Színház 22:2 (1989), 22.
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