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GABOR SZEKELY: THE MISANTHROPE, 1988 overture to Tannhduser at the beginning, influenced the sense of atmosphere, but the slight creaking of the floor proved to be more important from the point of view of acoustic effects. As in Ascher’s Three Sisters, the first three acts of which took place on an upper floor of a house, the creaking suggested the porousness of the walking surface and the structure that included it. IMPACT AND POSTERITY Although The Misanthrope was one of the paramount productions of the Katona Jézsef Theatre in the 1980s, it saw relatively few (in fact, only 47) performances, compared to other notable productions. The reason for this lies not so much in the impact of the events of 1989 (the regime change), or in the loss of the ideotextual power of the mise-en-scéne, but rather in the fact that Gábor Székely and György Cserhalmi left the company at the end of the 1988-1989 season, after which the production lived only for six months (until March 1990). Itwas only taken on tour to Moscow, but foreign theatre-makers and journalists saw it in Budapest as part of a professional meeting. Szekely received The Theatre Critics’ Award for Best Director and Gy6érgyi Szakacs for Best Costume and The Misanthrope was almost unanimously described as “masterful”,’” “fantastically good”, “100% theatre”? The Katona’s production and Petri’s new translation drew attention to Moliére’s play, which had been previously staged only three times (all on Odry Stage) following its 1971 production with Miklós Gábor and Edit Domján. However, in the last three decades it achieved some two dozen shows, directed by Tamás Ascher (Kaposvár, 1991), Gábor Tompa (Cluj, 2000) and Árpád Schilling (Krétakör Theatre, 2004) among others. Gábor Zsámbéki, who managed the Katona Jözsef Theatre from 1989 to 2011, also left his position with The Misanthrope, similarly to his predecessor. Zsámbéki started his mise-en-scene where Szekely had finished: on the bare stage, so that his Alceste, choosing to leave society, would end up homeless, locked in just a few square feet of trash, totally destitute, albeit in freedom... 972 Barta: Alceste, korunk hőse, 9. 973 Koltai: Újranéző, 43. 974 Tamás Barabás: A mizantróp, Esti Hírlap, Vol. 33, No. 279, 254 November, 1988, 2.
