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Kényes egyensúly (A Delicate Balance)
Written by Edward Albee
Translated by Ádám Réz
Cast:
Agnes: Gizi Fekete
Tobias: József Székhelyi
Claire: Zsuzsa Csarnóy
Julia: Zsuzsanna Cseh
Edna: Mária Bajcsay
Harry: Zoltán Szerémi
Set Design: Péter Galambos
Costume Design: Enikő Kárpáti
Dramaturgy: Eszter Orbán
Prompter: Noémi Szabó
Stage Manager: Zsolt Kertész
Assistant Director: Orsolya Szabó
Directed by Péter Galambos
Premier:
January 21, 2006. National Theater of Szeged, Hungary.
Missing the outset of a performance can be very ticklish. It is one of the
events we cannot be blamed for. Just as our partner has been putting on her
make-up for half an hour, she has had a run in her stocking, thus she has
put on a new collection of clothes with the matching colors. Or, in an
opposite case, he has not taken the right turn to gain some time, and has
not parked the car where it would not take 15 minutes to reach the theatre
from. S/he has no cash, the check girl does not have enough change. We do
not care, we leave her there and gallop up the stairs. As it usually is, our
seats are at the middle of the aisle, so we break our way through our
neighbors while murmuring some embarrassing apologies. We are late, the
actors are on stage, so we sit down, look at each other in anger and say:
“You see, I told ya not to …!” Both of us finish this sentence with our
grievances. In this very moment, we draw our guns and blow out the other’s
brain. Or vice versa. Or we both kill the other. Or, let alone, we blow our
brains out because we are fed up. The delicate balance is upset.
A Delicate Balance,
directed by Péter Galambos, starts with adding fuel to the flames: Agnes
(Gizi Fekete) and Tobias (József Székhelyi) are on stage 3-4 minutes before
the actual beginning. It is exactly that 3-4 minutes during which the
already-frustrated people fuming and forcing a smile (“snoblesse oblige”)
are arriving. Seemingly, this trick is one from the directorial trades.
Everyone gets cheesed off: those who are late, and those who have arrived in
time. The late-comers are scrambling over them, they are murmuring and
fidgeting about. Finally, when the lights are out and the performance
really starts, the whole audience is nothing but a huge room of tension.
Agnes and Tobias make up a middle-class couple sitting in their
minimalist-style living room. Everything is strikingly black and white: the
walls and the doors; the floor and the carpet; the pattern of the
limousine-long sofa. The two poles of the color scale bring in the sense of
a comfortable balance but that of the suffocating boredom as well. The
dialogues between Agnes and Tobias are also meaninglessly mainstream, unlike
their private remarks and shorter or longer soliloquies about their
grievances articulated in the echoic voice of a microphone. These beginning
remarks are the essence of the play, and –let’s face it– they are not
strange to our ears. Did not we have the same silent remarks about our
partner when we were on our way to the theatre? And how was that with that
gun? Did we get so annoyed that we would like to blow his/her brains out?
This is the case with Tobias. He is blowing out Agnes’s mind. Then again.
And again. In principle, of course. This outset, extraneous to the original
text, is effectively absurd and incisively real at the very same time: it is
the spectator’s shot and the metallic voice of his/her dumb thoughts
that are echoing on the stage.
 [http://www.nemzetiszinhaz.szeged.hu/hun/stone/performance.php?id=224]
Tobias is acted by József Székhelyi, director of Szegedi Nemzeti Színház
(National Theatre of Szeged). He artistically plays the grey, average and
indecisive man with the same precision and enthusiasm as he does the
furious, blunt-in-speech, hysterical Tobias towards the end of the play. His
dull outfit, the monotony of his voice, and his submissively bowed head
depict an apathetic man longing for a different life. This longing is
pictured by another ‘Tobias’ projected to the background of the stage. As
Erzsébet Sulyok points out in her critique,
Tobias wears a typical far-eastern garland in the projected picture, which
quite didactically shows that his current desire to break free is just as
unimaginatively schematic as his actual weekdays.[1]
 [http://www.nemzetiszinhaz.szeged.hu/hun/stone/performance.php?id=224]
Fekete Gizi acts Agnes’ bitter role with proficiency. The actress, who
hardly needs to be introduced to the audience of Szeged, lives up to the
expectations, even though she makes some mistakes in her lines and
noticeably corrects them. Luckily, the dynamic of the drama allows these
mistakes and corrections, what’s more, they add the commonplace flavor of
the play. Agnes introduces herself to the audience as a strong woman who has
tight control over her husband and family alike. It soon turns out that she
sees life with miserable prospects and boredom; she is tired of her own, her
husband’s, her daughter’s and her sister’s lives. Gizi Fekete represses
amazingly and compresses intelligently this bitterness into Agnes’s
character, thus the schematic figure of the mother who wants to keep control
over her family, remains on the surface.
 [http://www.nemzetiszinhaz.szeged.hu/hun/stone/performance.php?id=224]
The formality and coldness of the opening scene is broken by Agnes’s
alcoholic sister, Claire. Her clothing, style and behavior are the mere
opposite of the black and white composition: Claire’s colorful dress, red
hair and her vibrating personality – brilliantly acted out by Zsuzsa Csarnóy
– bring in the missing elements to the stage. “She plays the role of Agnes’s
alcoholic sister with such life-like naturalness that entrances the
audience,”[2]
says Sulyok in her critique. Claire’s alcohol-smelling, loose-tongued and
free-of-inhibitions figure seems to be the only straightforward character in
the play – Claire has no microphone-voiced remarks since she is the only one
who dares to utter everything she thinks or feels. Her name is a conscious
construct on the word “clear”, and a pragmatic example to nomen est omen.
Claire’s character is, thus the clearest one, a figure without lies and
evasions. Moreover, she is completely clear in her mind about others’
problems and hidden feelings and thoughts. Her funny remarks and
entertaining style make her the favorite of the audience.
 [http://www.nemzetiszinhaz.szeged.hu/hun/stone/performance.php?id=224]
Julia is Tobias and Agnes’s daughter. She is 36, has left four marriages
behind her – the last one has ended just now. Her character is acted out by
Zsuzsanna Cseh –who although a promising starlet of the National Theatre of
Szeged in the past years, cannot really meet these expectations in this
performance- plays Julia as if she were a teenager. Her hysterical
coming-outs are rather frivolous and artificial. At other times during the
play she is self-conscious, stiff and self-confident, which are hardly the
features of a woman having recently had four divorces. Zsuzsanna Cseh’s
slipped and hyperbolic play is – unluckily – emphasized by the other actors
and actresses’ high quality and well-constructed acting.
 [http://www.nemzetiszinhaz.szeged.hu/hun/stone/performance.php?id=224]
The last two characters in the play are Harry and Edna, who are Tobias and
Agnes’s (too) good friends. They are afraid, leave their house and end up at
Tobias and Agnes’s place, in Julia’s room. Harry and Edna are extremely
schematically acted, they cannot really be scoped out one by one, if they
can be at all. Their costumes are always in sync: due to their overwhelming
fear, they change from similar mackintoshes to the toxic lab assistants’
protective wear. Harry and Edna are annoying, vexing characters, who bring
and leave tension; their exit is more than desired by the audience. They are
not welcome in the house of Tobias and Agnes however hard they try to show
its opposite. Edna and Harry remind us of those acquaintances whom we love
but their full presence 24/7 is more than maddening. Harrys and Ednas
represent our friends, colleagues but most probably – our family members. We
cannot get rid of them, unlike our friends. Tobias cannot set himself free
of Agnes, but he can send Harry and Edna away, which he indirectly does so
in a hysterical monologue towards the end of the play.
 [http://www.nemzetiszinhaz.szeged.hu/hun/stone/performance.php?id=224]
It is not specified in the course of the play what Edna and Harry are
frightened of. Galambos claims that we, as they, all of us on the stage and
outside it are facing an “absurd global fear:”
The media - manipulated by business interests - spread a dumping of
information that fills us all with an unbelievable anxiety and with an
absurd global fear. Many people are even afraid of existence. We
[Hungarians] have already caught up with the Americans in this respect as
well. The world is so close to us. The war in Iraq, hurricanes, the bird
flu, etc. have all become part of our everyday life.[3]
It is worth bringing together Galambos’s message with Harry and Edna’s
virologist garment: the similar clothing of the people killing poultry on
suspicion of bird flu in recent media coverage. The theatrical staff must
have seen a symbolic value in this outfit since the brochure advertising the
performance has the same motif on it: a couple try to kiss each other but
fail to do so because they are wearing gas masks.
 [http://www.nemzetiszinhaz.szeged.hu/hun/stone/performance.php?id=224]
My observation at this point is that there has been too much emphasis on the
issue of fear whereas in the dramaturgy of the performance this issue is not
so much highlighted. The performance is rather saturated with the alienated
nature of human relationships. This is not a new topic, it can be found in
most of Albee’s plays (for example, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
The American Dream, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, etc.) The
scenery, also designed by Péter Galambos, is in parallel with the issue of
alienation. The background is covered by a huge “poster” showing a night
panorama of an American metropolis suggesting the feeling of alienation. The
interior design of the living room refers to cold, superficial
relationships: there are no photos, not a single souvenir, nothing at all
that would bring some heartiness or intimacy into the room. The only
exception is the giant fridge and the infinite amount of alcohol in it,
which binds all the characters together.
Further criticism should also be made on the brochure. A precise, neat
summary is given about Edward Albee’s life and works. However, the quality
of these serious, informative and almost academic lines is in contrast with
the style and quality of the last page, which presents a “informal
invitation” to Tobias and Agnes’s house. Its simplicity, clichés and dry
humor are almost upsetting: “Come then, you all welcome. Have a nice weekend
at Tobias and Agnes’s home. There’s gonna be fun, laugh, horror and fear.
Sister-in-law, daughter, friends. And you can always mix a cocktail for
yourselves whenever you want. If you can get at the fridge.”[4]
The pictures attached to the brochure –except for the one of Edward Albee–
are semiotically irrelevant to the play and to the performance.
Although the performance has very few musical elements, two aspects are
worth mentioning. First, Claire’s short singing is an intertextual
reference. In Act 2/Scene 2, Claire appears on stage wearing her colorful
dress, with an accordion in her hands. She is drunken enough to sing without
anyone surprised at it. But the melody and lyrics she is singing are more
surprising and humorous: “I don’t want my freedom, there’s no reason for
living…”[5]
Claire starts singing with a voice much similar to Freddie Mercury, but she
is soon booed at by the other characters. It is easy to recognize the song,
“It’s a hard life.” Supposedly, this song ironically (or very schematically)
refers to the characters’ miserably tense life. It is problematic because
the song is about a deserted lover’s feeling and as such has no relevance to
the performance except for its title.
http://www.nemzetiszinhaz.szeged.hu/hun/stone/performance.php?id=224]
Second, the “signature tune” during the shifts between the scenes is
unusually familiar to Hungarian ears. These notes are the same as that of
the opening chords of a well-known Hungarian series of cartoons, The
Mézgas (A Mézga család, 1968). These stories are about the life
and funny problems of an average Hungarian family whose members are
humorously flawed in one way or another. The title song starts with the
following line: “Sometimes you should be a bit crazy,” (“Néha légy bolond
egy kicsikét…”[6])
which obviously refers to the Mézgas’ loveably silly lifestyle. It is
exactly the line that comes to the spectator’s mind when these notes are
heard between the scenes. “Crazy” interprets as “unusual” and the song
addresses the characters to have an intimate coming-out when they say out
loud everything that has been hidden before. Actually Tobias does become
much of a “crazy” man especially during
his
hysterical monologue. Inserting this Hungarian intertextual reference has
also problematic sides. There are no other issues on the basis which the
Mézgas could be drawn in parallel with Tobias and Agnes’s family and life.
This insertion might have the uncomfortable illusion that the characters in
A Delicate Balance are degraded to the level of the Mézgas’. It might
also be a message that all the characters are crazy and their problems and
actions are mere foolishness, but most probably spectators sensitive to
deeper readings of dramas would not agree with this point.
[www.mediaguide.hu/
pannoniafilm/story.html]
Péter Galambos managed to stage a “perfect, correct and sometimes quite
effective”[7]
performance of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance. He worked with an
exceptional cast whose experienced acting provided quality entertainment for
the audience in Szeged. I found the use of audiovisual elements creative and
effective because, as such, they have a double role: they have become
indispensable devices of our everyday life, which fact brings the spectator
closer to the performance; at the same time – as Mr. Galambos has
articulated it – it is the media that conveys the “absurd global fear” to
people. The design of the scenery is praiseworthy since the whole stage is
filled with repulsive alienation. Problematic details can be found only in
less significant issues such as the design and content of the brochure and
some musical elements which seem to ridicule and degrade the characters and
their problems. I am convinced, however, that Péter Galambos and his staff
have surprised the audience of Szeged with an enjoyable and well-composed
production.
Notes
[1]
Erzsébet
Sulyok, “Színpadi kényes egyensúly,” Délmagyarország Online,
available:
http://www.delmagyar.hu/cikk.php?id=76&cid=116092, access: 26 February
2006
[2]
ibid.
[3]
Zsolt Hollósi, “Abszurd globális rettegés,” Délmagyarország Online,
available:
http://www.delmagyar.hu/cikk.php?id=76&cid=115926, access: 26 February
2006.
[4]
Pamphlet of A Delicate Balance directed by Péter Galambos in the
season of 2005/2006 of the National Theatre of Szeged, Hungary. (Translation
mine.)
[5]
“Queen – It’s a Hard Life Lyrics,” available:
http://www.sing365.com/music/Lyric.nsf/It's-A-Hard-Life-lyrics-Queen/C6EF923652C95FB24825689400057288,
access: 26 February 2006
[6]
“Mesedalok – Mézga Géza Főcímdal,” available:
http://www.zeneszoveg.hu/dalszoveg.phtml?szk=12853&, access: 26 February
2006. (Translation mine.)
[7]
Sulyok,
op. cit. |
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