Bálint Botos Archives | Bálint Botos

a play of vivid characterization and dramatic conflict where social realism joins with lyricism, comedy with tragedy, a work rich in psychological and dramatic ambiguities which reveal that apparent polar opposites are not always what they seem.

The society depicted by Ostrovsky in Kalinov is based on his close observation of the mores of merchant communities on the upper reaches of the Volga, and is perhaps not typical of Russian provincial society as a whole. It is a dark kingdom where elements of Russian culture of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries seem to exist, almost unresolved, side by side. From this raw ethnographical material he has produced a play of vivid characterization and dramatic conflict where social realism joins with lyricism, comedy with tragedy, a work rich in psychological and dramatic ambiguities which reveal that apparent polar opposites are not always what they seem.

It is precisely because he has sensed the tragic tensions lying deep within this society and reflected in the semantic ambivalence of many of its central values that Ostrovsky has turned what could have been merely an interesting ethnographical study into one of the dramatic masterpieces of the Russian stage.

R. A. Peace

DIRECTOR: Bálint Botos
STAGE DESIGN: Blanka-Alíz Bajkó
COREOGRAPHER: Attila Bordás

Cast:
Róbert Dunkler, Tamás Jakab, Andrea Fincziski, Norbert Esti, Xénia-Abigél Nagy, Orsolya Albert, Árpád Barabás, Attila Pál, Kata László, Árpád Tóth, Gellért Szűcs-Olcsváry, Emőke Lukács, Helka Dunkler

Growing frustrations, bitterness, disappointments, and in some cases boredom, bring the characters to the brink of self destruction, but for lack of true commitment or control, they fail.

The failed suicides are mainly plot devices to either just simply keep the story line going or to allow for a change in direction in the characters’ lives. Growing frustrations, bitterness, disappointments, and in some cases boredom, bring the characters to the brink of self destruction, but for lack of true commitment or control, they fail. We as viewers of their failures respond in a humorous manner because the authors either make it clear that their characters are not capable of success or that the attempt is merely a ploy to bring about their desired change.

In short, the failed suicides are comic because the situations are created in a nontraditionally absurd framework. We can’t take the plans for suicide too seriously when all the characters do is talk or use ineffective means or act over-sentimentally. Yet, while we realize the comic nature of these situations, we are also reminded of the bitterness of life that creates the need to even consider ending it all and to then, for severed reasons, be forced to continue.

Marilynn J. Smith