Northern Theatre Harag György Company

On Friday, the Harag György Company of the Northern Theatre Satu Mare closed a three-stage tour: first in Timișoara and then in Debrecen, where they performed the drama written by Szőcs Géza. The production, which premiered in Hungarian in 2019, is an important milestone in the life of the Harag György Company, as the production, which involved almost the entire company, was a great success not only with the audience in Satu Mare, but also with the audiences of several major theatre festivals, including the MITEM International Theatre Festival of the National Theatre in Budapest and the Hungarian Theatre Festival BUKFEST in Bucharest.

The production also won an award at the Kisvárda Festival of Hungarian Theatres: Rappert-Vencz Gábor received the award for best male lead actor, and the company was honoured for best teamwork.
In Timișoara, at the MAFEST, the festival of the Hungarian Theatre Association of the MASZIN, the hall of the Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre was the venue of a very important performance for the company, as Rasputin was performed for the 25th time. The production was played in sold out and the audience in Timisoara celebrated with a standing ovation that lasted for minutes, and after the performance, the cast and backstage crew were treated to a surprise behind the curtain - chocolate cake and champagne - in honour of the 25th performance. On this occasion, the company director Bessenyei Gedő István and the director of the production, Sardar Tagirovsky, also congratulated the audience.

„It's a good number, 25 performances, which few performances in this genre reach in our repertoire. It would have been a less glaring performance in a broader range of age groups or audience favourites in the musical or comedy genre, but for a four-hour production of a contemporary "fictional historical drama" with deep ideas, it is almost an exceptional achievement. Our company can boast such numbers of performances, exclusively for adult audiences and staged with a contemporary flavour, when the production is the subject of lively professional interest, with numerous festival invitations. With Rasputin, we felt that this was a particularly great achievement because the production had been condemned to a long period of silence due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. The number of 25 performances is also an indication of the high professional and audience interest, as the production has already performed in Bucharest, Budapest, Debrecen, Kisvárda, Odorheiu Secuiesc, Timisoara, Sfântu Gheorghe, Oradea, Baia Mare and Carei - and the list will be extended with new venues in the future. So this 25th performance is not the end of a journey, but an important milestone on Rasputin's road to resounding success." - Bessenyei Gedő István, the company's director, told us.

Following the Timisoara performance, the 26th and 27th performances of Rasputin took place in Debrecen, in the Latinovits Hall of the Csokonai Forum, the new building of the theatre inaugurated at the beginning of this season, on Thursday and Friday. It was a great success here too, with a total of nearly seven hundred spectators in Debrecen attending the Satu Mare production.