Oradea Archives | Bálint Botos

Fatherless (Platonov)

Purple Acacia

The suicide

The more miserable Platonov’s situation and condition become, the more boldly Chekhov employs comedic elements.

We can see many examples of how much of the later Chekhovian dramaturgy can be found in Bezatcovscsina – the figure of the disintegrated (life) protagonist, the seemingly meaningless words not closely tied to the previous lines, but above all, the infallible sense for tragicomedy, the grotesque, the insight and depiction of the absurd, and the almost unparalleled ability to balance the horrific and the amusing. Moreover, it’s not just about the balance and proportions: Chekhov also knows, perhaps more instinctively than consciously at the time of creation, how these grotesque counterpoints should develop.

The more miserable Platonov’s situation and condition become, the more boldly Chekhov employs comedic elements. The finale, the fourth act, is already abundant with these, even though – or rather precisely because – the story is progressing towards the death of the central figure, the hero.

Tibor Déry

DIRECTOR: Bálint Botos
SCENOGRAPHY: Blanka-Alíz Bajkó
MUSIC: Magor Bocsárdi

Ágnes Gajai, István Hunyadi, Cecília Trabalka, Attila Balogh, Réka Fodor, Imre Dobos, József Szotyori, Melinda Pitz, Róbert Kardos M., Hunor Sebestyén, Levente Kovács, Eduárd Szabó, Lóránt Csatlós

For beauty itself is agitational and ultimately identical to the eternal human good.

The book is filled with images – organic images that belong to the organism of the novel – and these images strike the chord of pain, resonating in the reader’s heart. There is humor too, this charmingly smiling and smile-inducing humor, as if it had first bathed in the waters of pain.
The local values of the novel are perfect. The milieu is perfect and almost shockingly lifelike, the external lives of the characters, who have walked from the street onto the pages of the book, are perfect, the thinking and dialectical fusion of Budapest are perfect, and not a single false or deceitful note hurts our ears. Like a lens focusing sunlight, the local subject and form gather and concentrate universal human desires into a stronger light.

The fundamental motif: the pain of unfulfilled, because unfulfillable, desire. This has been the eternal motif of poetry since time immemorial and will remain so until the end of time, as the purest source of tragedy. The desire of youth, the orchestra of unfulfillable desires, resonates through the book, and at the end of the symphony, the reader clutches their heart in terror – Why do I live?
The suggestion of the beauty of art is enough to make a person – consciously or unconsciously – bow their head in ethical contemplation. For beauty itself is agitational and ultimately identical to the eternal human good. And it depends only on the stage of cultural development in what artistic form the humanly understood law of truth and beauty manifests itself.

Tibor Déry

DIRECTOR: Bálint Botos
SCENOGRAPHY: Bajkó Blanka-Alíz
COREOGRAPHY: Csaba Györfi
ADAPTATION: Sándor Guelmino

CAST:
Hunor Sebestyén, Eszter Román, Noémi Tasnádi-Sáhy, Róbert Kardos M., Levente Kovács, Ágnes Gajai, Géza Hajdu, Csaba Kiss, Attila Balogh, Anna Kocsis, Enikő Fábián, Dávid Scurtu,

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