Szkéné Theatre
“None of us is perfect, and each one of us has their own secrets, no doubt. None of us is flawless... But we are sane fanatics of reality, living a treadmill of good compromises.” Comrade Pánczél
István Balla Bán - Zoltán Friedenthal
Dr Elvira Szádeczky, Comrade Pánczél - Eszter Csákányi
Kata - Hella Roszik
Timike - Éva Enyedi
Bea Zakariás - Zsófia Szamosi
Imre Tatár - Béla Pintér
Szujó, Waiter, Pogány - Szabolcs Thuróczy
Ferenc Tatár, Ági - Angéla Stefanovics
Borbíró - György Póta
Konkoly - Gábor Pelva
Gábor Pelva – violin, viola, guitar
György Póta – synthesizer, double-bass, viola
Hella Roszik – violin
Dramaturg – Éva Enyedi
Costume designer – Mari Benedek
Costumes designer’s assistant – Julcsi Kiss
Stage – Gábor Tamás
Lighting – László Varga
Sound – István Simon
Props – László Quitt
Finances – Gyula Inhaizer
Productions – Anna Hidvégi
Director’s assistant – Rozi Hajdú
Playwright/director – Béla Pintér
"In the manner Pintér makes reference to present-day Hungary’s politics is indeed without any cover-up, neither small nor big time, of what happened in the past during the Communist rule.
Rearing up their heads ever since Communism was toppled, quite a number of theatres claim to be ”national” in Hungary. If ”national theatre”, for that matter, gets defined as one that has interest in dealing with issues of relevance concerning both Hungary’s past and present, as well as one that re-defines tradition continuously, and, too, as one that presents anything new as is to be seen through a prism of the past – whether with razor sharp humour yet no human affections spared – then it is Béla Pintér and Company that is to be considered the most national theatre in this land. Nothing here to be enclosed in quotation marks, nothing to be questioned."
"The performance by Pintér and Company not only upsets but also dumbfounds you yet, simultaneously, makes you laugh too.
For their diagnosis here is not only precise and detailed but also puts in perspective: it relates exactly to what a socially sensitive critical theatre as its prime mission is expected to. It utters the unutterable, tells the untellable. It makes you come face-to-face with this all; and does so in a simple yet cathartic manner. The stage play, demonstrating civilian courage too, will uncover hell’s deep as it advances round and round, into deeper and deeper dimensions."Hungary’s Communism as such, Dezső Kovács, revizoronline.hu (October 6, 2013)
"The threads of the plot, which has a mosaic-like structure, gradually become interwoven into a texture. Finally, the fruit of the loom is a nicely manufactured gobelin tapestry with a group picture on it the characters of which who look back on us – I must re-assure you about this – are not at all just agents of Hungary’s near-past. Making such an overall picture of our near-past, nevertheless, would in itself be something as so many of Hungary’s present-day predicaments stem from the fact that no attempt at all has been made at coming face-to-face, whether objectively or with emotions, with what happened in the past. And the lack of such attempts is not reflected, exclusively, by the fact that each and every government in power since the end of the Communist rule has surreptitiously avoided the issue of making the Communists’ informers’ folders publicly known, putting on reticence while, too, putting the problem under the table...." Béla Pintér as involved in the issue of the Communists’ informers, Judit Csáki, hvg.hu, (October 5, 2013)
"A dramaturgical vehicle Pintér brilliantly applies in drama is ambivalence: in his play, everything like a cloth has a right and a wrong side too, and what prompts you to have a critical look back on the past is his theatrical expertism based on this ambivalence that provides full amusement. Out of the superb fiction, silhouettes of real persons loom, laughable shadows of present-day leaders linger too. And what the play offers is not fabricated theories about what happened in the past of Hungary but stories on people’s lives, which are not inhumane despite their brutal, derogatory and dark tones, and, which, through a grand dramaturgical shortcut, arrive in our present in the end." His leader, Andrea Tompa, Magyar Narancs (September 28, 2013)
Premiere: 28 September 2013.
Béla Pintér and Company was founded in 1998 under the leadership of Béla Pintér, who stages his own plays and performs in them as an actor.
It is the artists’ intention to create contemporary productions based on critical-ironic observations of society and themselves. The surreal world which generally characterises their productions is constructed from a combination of reality and dream, of authentic and kitsch, and from sundry elements of Hungarian culture. Thanks to their success, the company is nowadays regarded as one of the most significant and most inventive creative workshops.
Sponsors: Ministry of Human Resources of Hungary, National Cultural Fund of Hungary, Szkéné Theatre