FESTIVAL DIARY 5.
The 5th day of the festival was the day of
Gogol and
Ionesco. A nice company.
We all come out from Gogol's “
Overcoat.”
Dostoyevsky said.
Ionesco cоme out from there too, for sure.
“
Rhinoceros”, staged by
Frank Hoffmann at the
National Theatre of Luxembourg shows us what’s happening when culture loses its convincing and regulating force. People refuse to bother with moral subjects, they prefer to become as natural as possible, as integral as possible. No doubts and no regrets, no thought and no judgment. Thus starts their transfiguration into rhinoceros.
Actors firstly took it from the amusing side. They mixed with the audience before the performance, pretending they are ordinary spectators. (They were so successfully hidden that I was not able to recognize the well-known Bulgarian actor
Samuel Finzi, sitting 4 chairs from me). Soon after that they suddenly started to speak loud, to quarrel and to spray beer around provoking disturbance among the spectators. When they at last decided to move on stage, they continued with some circus style tricks – climbing chairs and tables, flying in the air, wearing large or extravagant costumes. It was a very attractive show, not imposing directly any philosophy or concept of leaving, keeping in this way the spirit of Ionesco’s play.
Another Utopia I detected here (I already have a collection of utopias from the festival days): Love can save the human. Well, not quite so. Daisy left too, the nature called her. The defense of the human situation is a solitary deed, a personal decision and one is always alone when making his existential choice. Beranger remains alone and, although he admits he also feel attraction for rhinoceros, he chooses to remain human. Illogically. Humans are illogical.
„You are a human! You are a human! You are a human!“ Beranger shouted to his transfiguring friend. Well. It’s just a statement. Or a mantra? A spell? We should hear/repeat it often nowadays - there are more and more human beings who make the choice to be strangers to humanity.
“
Diary of a Madman” after Gogol, directed by
Bodó Viktor and performed by
Keresztes Tamás (production of
Katona József Theatre, Orlai Production Office and MASZK Association, Hungary) tells the incredible story of how the humble Russian titular clerk Poprishchin tranforms into a Spanish king. The long path of this transfiguration is traced in detail, psychologically and physically. Both
Bodó Viktor and the exceptional (I would say incomparable) young actor
Keresztes Tamás worked with dedication and respect on Gogol’s text. It’s obvious that it was analized, felt, experimented virtually. What is to be in the shoes of a titular clerk with strictly limited social life and totally closed horizons for any change? The only temporarily escape he could afford is the cheap access to theater (3 kopeiki). There are no other options or variations written by his destiny. Social system is fixed and a titular clerk remains titular clerk for the eternity.
To map visually the harms produced by the crash between real and imaginary inside the head of Poprishchin, the creators use a restricted acting space, arranged with deformed objects, as if it’s a nightmare scenery (
Keresztes Tamás is also the stage designer).
Delimited inside the cruel social conventions and inside the minuscule magically transformable stage, Poprishchin’s socially invisible body sends an SOS message to the imaginary, authorizing it to action and to find escape. The desired but highly inaccessible social, material, emotional values are attacked by the only free and mobile sector of his personality – the imaginary.
Imaginary composes a whole new life in motion, using randomly information from the real life – a newspaper title, popular ideas and personal desires. Thus our clerk incidentally decides to become king of Spain.
The developing madness is so meticulously performed by
Keresztes Tamás, that no description could express the richness of emotional states we receive from the stage. I’ll just say: you have to see this performance, you should remember the name of this actor.
Aglika Stefanova-Oltean
