Tamás Koltai
Hungarian Ritual
[...]
Béla Pintér, first a folk dancer, a promising young talent, creates ritual in the capacity of writer, actor and director of his own alternative theatre group. Pintér was very likely inspired by folk music and folk dance to create their mythology. In his three directions up to date, both played an essential part.
Népi rablét (as well as being an anagram of Pintér's name, means the people's imprisoned existence) provides an infinite ritual of a village wedding. Alongside the dancing with the bride into the wee hours, the various musical pieces combine folk songs, modern hits, and worthless kitsch. The night of carousing offers a ruthlessly grotesque picture of prejudices, false ideas and primitive traditions all drenched in
alcohol. Pintér's second production entitled Hospital-Bakony contrasts everyday life with the legends. This performance is like a surreal dream. The tragicomic events of a hospital ward mix with a genuine Hungarian legend-romanticized highwaymen-in the manner of a montage. The parody is biting, once again using the contrast of typical "ritual" populism.
Last in the line of Pintér productions is A sehova kapuja (The Gate to Nowhere). The title is another pun: this time on Jehova tanuja (Jehova's Witness). The topic is sectarianism, and not merely in the religious sense of the term. It is about the abuse of religion, faith and love, and about their commercialism. It is about clothes we wear as costumes. About rites that turn hollow at best or quite simply serve as an opportunity to do business. About preaching that conceals weakness and deceit. The sect of the "Sehova" sets out to do missionary work among the Hungarian minority of Romania. As before, two worlds are being mingled. The director juxtaposes, in parenthesis, the sickeningly sweet, profaned/Americanized public relations exercise in religion, with all the waves and the hallelujahs, and the rustically simple, even naive version of the Catholic ceremony. This double vision runs through the entire performance. The disguise of a missionary meets the costume of a fake folknik. On board a train heading for Transylvania, a young man dressed in a spurious folk costume seems easy prey, too good to miss. There is a hitch, however: the young man comes from a folk dance function, hence the costume. In other respects, he drinks like a fish and swears like a drill sergeant. In the course of the discussion, proselytizer and convert both blow their covers, and do so amidst a great deal of confusion. While the shrewd and cynical chief sectarian is obliged to conceal his "mission", he must do his best to save his recent convert, a neophyte "brother", from instinctively running into the fake folknik's vulgarism. Eventually, the young man in folk costume gives away his latent homosexuality. This is too much for the hypocritical moral preacher. On top of everything, the Transylvanian priest in the middle of confession is all over a lonesome and lovesick nursery school teacher in her early forties, who has fallen in love with a boy from Budapest, not yet corrupted by the sect. The teacher is the only one who still possesses the ability to love. When the missionary activities finally deteriorate into an orgy, she is the only one who is let off the obligation to enter the "Gate to Nowhere". She stands in front of it, singing a beautiful and pure song.
Pintér's malice is targeted at commercial enterprise, both church and secular, which offers us pseudo salvation, the plague of our age. Injected into Hungarian ritual, the effect is even more frenetic.
Tamás Koltai
editor of Színház, a theatre monthly, is The Hungarian Quarterly's regular theatre reviewer.
