Móricz Zsigmond : Barbarians (theatre performance)

Móricz Zsigmond ’s short story Barbarians is one of the most iconic and powerful texts in Hungarian literature. Its rawness, depth, and instinctive yet sacred atmosphere are unmatched.

This is precisely what the performance seeks to emphasize: to reveal a world of (folk) existence that can be harsh, lush, bawdy, and violent at times, yet is also filled with sancity, compassion, and faith.

Alongside spoken drama, the production places strong emphasis on the visual language of movement theatre and puppetry, as well as a continuous live musical presence.

A long-debated question is how Hungarian folk art can be brought onto the stage in a way that creates a distinctive Hungarian aesthetic and theatrical language, one that remains organically contemporary. In other words, how the work of Kodály and Bartók accomplished in music could be translated into theatre. Many have attempted this before, and it is a question that deeply engages the creators of this production as well.

By opening up the original short story, the performance allows Juhászné, in search of her husband and son, not only to travel across Transdanubia but to journey through the entire Carpathian Basin. At one point, her search even crosses into a metaphysical realm and ultimately leads her into death itself.

Through this wandering the production vividly reveals the sacred and profane world described above: a landscape populated by garabonciás figures, táltos shamans, witches, shepherds, taverns and churches, wastelands and celebrations, everyday life and ritual, frost and blazing heat.

Beyond all this, Barbarians signals a crucial theme already in its title. Móricz writes about people who, though they speak the same language, live in such radically different worlds, ways of life, and worldviews that they ultimately fail to understand one another at all. This phenomenon is even more pronounced in our world today.

Finally, the motif of Juhászné’s search carries a compelling parallel: just as she searches for people, the process of collecting and research itself is about seeking out individuals, and through them, a body of knowledge we fear may be lost to time.

Cast:
János Appelshoffer, István Berecz, Hanga Kacsó, Kinga Katona, Kata Kurucz-Tókos, Rebeka László, Péter Herczegh, Márk Horváth, Tünde Rémi, László Sebestyén Szabó, and Zoltán Zsuráfszky Jr.

Music: Sándor Csoóri Jr., Áron Horváth
Director: Nándor Berettyán
Photography: Péter Szőke

Ticket price: 5,500 HUF