Oldal 196 [196]
OCR
THE TRAGIC OF “VITAL HATRED” of the scenery was enhanced by the fact that this complex set, which did not show a concrete location and whose impenetrability was an essential feature, was pushed to the back more and more between the acts until it disappeared almost completely. “As a space, it ended as a theatre space.” Although it got stripped down and became gradually clearer and emptier, as the need for clarity was increasing in Alceste’s drama, its theatricality became even more evident. A velvet curtain, some lighting effects, Arsinoé’s and the barons’ entry with music in order to show the letter revealing all or nothing - all these things indicated that theatricality as well as impenetrability are inextinguishable. There was also a chandelier lying on the ground as a peripheral element in the left front corner of the stage, and Alceste repeatedly crouched down there to light its burnt candles. The alternatives of making this chandelier a theatrical sign (i.e. of involving it in the process of signification) became telling factors of divergence in the otherwise uniformly positive critical reception of the show. Some did not even notice it, some thought it was meaningless, some interpreted it exclusively within the scope of the mise-en-scene,’®” and some highlighted it in a broader context.°” Only this latter approach gave sufficient emphasis to an element which, in terms of the orientation of the mise-enscéne, could even be considered as its emblem. It displayed (firstly) classicality lowered from its supposed heights, (secondly) the lighting of candles for departed souls with sacral symbolism,*” and (thirdly) the total ruin of the situation, in a politically allegorical way. In keeping with the set, the costumes evoked Moliére’s age too, but only by their tailoring: the modesty of their decorations and the darkish colors diminished their archaic character. Alceste’s brown corduroy jacket and breeches contained a reference to the attire of Hungarian intellectuals of the 1980s, at least as far as the color and the material were concerned. Some musical insertions, such as Wagner’s 96 S Tarján: Odi et amo, 21. °68 Cf. “[...] [have not discovered any functions of the chandelier placed on the ground, and the repeated acting with it.” Féldes: A mizantrép, ma, 21. °°° Cf. Cserhalmi’s Alceste often “squats down, sinks to the ground. Lying on the floor, he repeatedly sets fire to the candles of the lowered chandelier, as if he were hoping for light on the earth from a single matchstick.” Tarjan: Odi et amo, 21. ° Cf. “Onstage, the twinkling light of a lamp barely lights up. Alceste is fiddling with a chandelier, trying to draw some more light out of it. He is lighting the candles for a while, then forgoes the process and stops. He is right: this chandelier is — torn off. It’s over.” Csaki: »Ez a vilag — rohad”, 28. Cf. “Cserhalmi plays Moliére, but he also plays Zoltan Latinovits and Gabor Body. At the age of forty, at the height of his strength [...] he is a typical generational hero, a medium for an earlier and a future generation too.” Tarjan: Odi et amo, 21. — Six weeks after the opening of The Misanthrope, Istvan Verebes made the same gesture (in a much more bombastic way) in his mise-en-scene of George Bernard Shaw’s play, produced simply as Joan at Radnöti Theatre, after the end of which the audience found great many portraits of tragically deceased famous Hungarians in the lobby, with candles burning in front of them and Ferenc Demjén’s pop hit, Candles resounding from the loudspeakers. 97 s 194
