Northern Theatre Harag György Company

„ In preparing for the seventieth season, our most important concern was to make sure that the celebratory season was worthy in every way of the first season in 1953 in Baia Mare. The first season of the company was marked by the names of directors such as Harag György, Tompa Miklós, Farkas István and the young Kovács Ferenc, while the second season saw the debut of Szabó József (Ódzsa). The festive season will be launched by two directors of inescapable importance, a Romanian and a Hungarian master from Romania, Andrei Șerban and Bocsárdi László. Our festive weekend, originally planned for November, would have begun with this performance - and we intend to move the programme unchanged to April, after the government decree that made our original plans impossible.

In such a celebratory, anniversary season, we ourselves, the artists of the Harag György Company, are also concerned with our own identity: even when we search for the past from the present, even when we address the present to the past. It is a symbolic coincidence that Bocsárdi László was interested in this very play, which also deals with the problem of identity in a context that is still relevant today, namely war. A fateful situation at a defining moment: celebrating our seventieth year, we can look at ourselves through the glasses of a director of the same stature as seventy years ago and ask the question: who are we really?"

In the performance, the Olympian gods play the fool with the people, copying and duplicating one character after another. The story itself has been adapted in many ways, by Sophocles and Molière, but the most popular and most performed version today is by Heinrich von Kleist, and has been performed by the Harag György Company.

"For me, too, it's an important idea that the gods can play with us, they can do what they want with us. Everyone can decide what they mean by gods. The play is about human helplessness, the desperate state of being helpless. But also, of course, about love. The text is good because it has this extraordinary despairing vision, but it also points out that man has been given the capacity for love, which gives meaning and value to his life. Amphitryon is about a world coming apart. A world where basic values are disappearing. We are in a chaos that has been visited upon us many times in history as a result of the decline of the Judeo-Christian cultural circle. At such times, as now, other religions are beginning to gain ground, and religious wars are breaking out. The space that Christianity has occupied in the world so far can be taken up," says the director of the performance.

Amphitryon, the great general, returns home triumphant after a long war. His wife, Alcmene, does not leap for joy into his arms. She says it is only a few hours since they shared the pleasures of love together. None of them know that they are at the mercy of the gods' evil play. Zeus, the god of gods, has assumed the image of a husband to spend the night with Alcmene.

The characters in the play are in agony as they search for a way out of a labyrinth that defies human reason, in an uncertain and unknowable world that is not unfamiliar to the modern viewer. We fight for the right to clarity and always come up short.

Cast: Rappert-Vencz Gábor, Orbán Zsolt, Nagy Csongor Zsolt, Diószegi Attila, Sosovicza Anna, Budizsa Evelyn, Nagy Orbán, Varga Sándor, Gaál Gyula, Bezsán Noémi, and Alexa István, Bóné Szabolcs, Budai József and Fleisz Patrik.
Set design: Bartha József, costume: Irina Moscu, dramaturge Dálnoky Réka, choreographer: Bezsán Noémi, light design: Bányai Tamás, composer: Bakk-Dávid László.