Madonna's playing in the background and for the first time in a few weeks I'm in a truly good mood. So count your blessings ;)
As you know, I'm on this little internship programme with a theatre company in Dublin, along with four other people - Cian (producer), Deirdre (designer), Sarah Jane (lighting designer) and Sophie (director). We were sent to Budapest at the invitation of a director there named Lazslo Marton, and thanks to him, we got to see a very wide variety of performances in Hungary, and here they are:
1) Rattled and Disappeared. This was a crazy piece of theatre loosely inspired (apparently) by Kafka's the Trial. I had no idea of this, but it didn't matter. The set was extremely deep and long (maybe 15 metres) and looked like a very long corridor. There were doors and windows and holes all the way along it, through which the actors came and went throughout. The whole place filled with smoke, there were dominatrix bitches from hell, drug addicts dancing to songs from the musical "Chicago" (numerous times!) and various other things. The best moment was the orgy, which featured a song called "Little Black Spiders" by Armand van Helden. You MUST download this track, it's awesome!! All of the actors in the show had amazing bodies, male and female, and it was just really sexy and insane and exciting. There was a slight 1920s feel to it, but there were also people surfing, and even an alien at the very end!!
(There's a photo at this link: http://www.szinhaz.hu/index
It was the best thing I saw there, and it was only a pity that we saw it on the very first night!!
2) Mary Stuart by Schiller. This was a relatively conservative and rather boring production, although Elizabeth was hilariously butch and fat. She looked a little what I might look like if I dressed up in a leather version of one of Queen Elizabeth's dresses... Which, while amusing, is really not a good thing. The set was extremely simple (one large piece on wheels that could be manipulated and became a door, Elizabeth's throne (which she knocked over! grrrr!) and various other things. And then, from the ceiling, 6 electric fans were lowered to make Mary's pretty skirts flutter in the wind. Very silly. Overall the show was quite boring...
3) 3rd night we saw Peer Gynt, performed by Kreatakor, who are amazing. About 8 actors (one of whom is INDECENTLY attractive) played all the characters in 4 hours of rather terrifying and confusing but very engaged theatre. They had no set, apart from a set of stairs and a circular platform on the stage, which revolved. There was loads of nudity, and at the end, all the characters appeared as penguins. For no real reason, but it kinda worked!! There are photos on their website... http://www.kretakor.hu/ (The hottie is this guy: http://www.kretakor.hu/?sub=C1
4) Monday night was an evening off, thank god!
5) Tuesday we saw Caligula, which was the performance, I think, that I was most excited to see. It was really strange. The performance was in an old trade union cinema/screening room. Several seats had been removed though, so there was an acting space on the main theatre floor, then large wooden crates leading up to the actual stage, which was sealed with huge perspex doors. The whole stage was surrounded with a honeycomb in gold, and at the centre of each hexagone was a golden lightbulb. On the main floor, and hung from the ceiling, were countless mirror balls. So obviously I was very excited! But then, the play started. It was more of the same darkly weird theatre style that Hungarians seem to like - no glamour, just extremely raw, slightly scarily intense acting. "I BELIEVE IN MY ART SO MUCH THAT I WILL HURT MYSELF TO GET YOUR ATTENTION OR MAKE YOU BELIEVE THAT WHAT I AM DOING IS IMPORTANT" kinda theatre. Which is a bit too much. The girls in the group really really loved this show, but the boys didn't. Go figure! There are actually loads of good photos of this production at this link: http://www.radnotiszinhaz.hu
6) Next night we saw A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now, I LOVE this play. Love it very much. But I hated this production. It was performed with puppets and a tiny cast and terrible actors. Everyone was dressed in white and Puck was a tiny energetic little harpy that we wanted to strangle after about 3 minutes. To give you some idea: Oberon had a 6 foot feather boa as a penis, which kept getting stuck in things. Then he raped Puck at one point, who proceded to cough up feathers. Yuck. Not even a big funny.
7) Next night we came to a really cool arts venue for a dance performance, which I have to say i LOVED. Not just because there was an incredibly beautiful dancer with a cute piercing naked on rollerblades. Although of course that helped ;) There are photos of this show and others by the same company here: http://www.hallercamping.hu
8) The following evening we made our way to the belly of the hill that's crowned with Budapest castle, for a performance in an old hospital. This was four hours of wandering through the bowels of the old building, following Kreatakor's version of the story of Siegfried and Niebelung. I have no IDEA what happened. But it was quite amazing. The best moment was in an old dormitory full of beds (where the audience were forced to sit, one by one). A crazy crazy lady sang "Personal Jesus" at the top of her voice, and then all the lights went off, and she lit a flare and stuck it in her mouth like a cigar. It was insane! Then the lights came back and we saw Freya sitting on a bed gibbering, since she had clearly lost her mind. This was "the twilight of the gods". It really was remarkable. Remarkably self-indulgent, also, but it was fascinating.
9) Peasant Opera, by Bela Pinter. This was very strange, performed in a university theatre space in an incredible building on the Danube. The story was about a young man and woman who were about to get married, and then a whole twisted tale of adulteries, emmigration, and parents murdering guests who turned out to be their own children ensued. It was probably much funnier in Hungarian, but they did provide very surreal English subtitles...There's a long review of the show here http://www.mvdaily.com/articles
10) MEDEA. AT the Katona Josef theatre, which is part of the Union des Theatres de l'Europe. Woop-de-doo. It was appallingly DREADFUL. Although I did take the piss afterwards talking to the others. They all hated it, and so I pretended it was fabulous for about five minutes until I had them completely convinced that it was the best Medea i'd ever seen. They I told the truth and shared their horror at such an ugly performance. Here are some photos. Apparently it won loads of awards, which information makes me rather wonder about the mental ability of judges and theatre critics in Hungary, but nonetheless... http://www.theatre.org.hu
11) The next night we saw the most self-indulgently cringe-worthy show of them all, called "Dance in Time". It was a dance piece by our host, Mr. Marton, celebrating the history of modern hungary through dancing. YUCK!! The whole thing took place in a cafe, and started in the 1920s, went through the wars (complete with Jews waltzing away to the gas chambers, families being halved by Soviets... barf....) and then ended up in a contemporary nightclub with racial tensions bubbling over. It was horrendously self-satisfied, although the audience adored it. It's been playing for 15 years and has toured the whole bloody world.
12) Festen. Side note - I never want to see another production of this play or story. Yes, it's remarkable. No, I don't like it. Yes, it's important. No, I would never bother doing it. This production was enormously well acted, and some of the directorial things were remarkable. By the time I saw it, though, I'd seen so many plays and so many other rehearsals that I just couldn't deal with it. The others raved and rhapsodised about it - when we met the director afterwards - but I kept my mouth shut since I actually slept through much of the first half. http://www.vigszinhaz.hu/html
13) Unlucky number, albeit the last.... We were taken to see Richard III at the Hungarian National Theatre on our last night. The building looks like a hotel in Las Vegas, complete with a lake in front, and a courtyard that Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire would happily dance on, underneath the stars. In hideously bad taste, the facade of the old, popular National Theatre has been submerged in the lake for all to see that it has met its doom and been replaced by this monstrosity.
I have never seen a more ridiculous performance in my whole life. Ever. It was absolutely endless. And while the stage is remarkable - it can lift and drop and tilt and change within seconds, silently, the production was nothing more than an advertisement for all its capabilities. Really it was hilarious. There were CARS on stage. TWO ACTUAL CARS. And just when we thought it couldn't possibly get any more ridiculous, Richard had his dream. And then, since it was a dream, everyone he'd murdered reappeared in white. As did a WHITE, Third, Car. And - wait for it - A HORSE!!!!!!!! Honestly, I thought it would never end. It would have made Cacoyannis' Coriolanos seem interesting and brief. http://www.nemzetiszinhaz.hu
There are loads of photos and even a video on their website!!!
So that's all. We also saw rehearsals for The Wild Duck, 100 Years of Solitude and a few other things. It was remarkable and exciting and really really tiring - I needed a holiday when I got back! And instead I had Christmas... hahaha.
