Bálint Botos’ direction, which faithfully captures the atmosphere of the first and only novel by poet Szilárd Borbély, who tragically passed away exactly ten years ago, depicts the absence of freedom and its desperate search. The story is set in a village that both fears and provides safety, a village that remembers yet easily forgets. It is simultaneously realistic and dreamlike, hopeless and hopeful, cruel and sensitive.
Szilárd Borbély portrays the highly grounded reality of a struggling family in a small village on the Great Hungarian Plain, encompassing a complex, multi-layered world: the mysterious rivers flowing beneath the village and perhaps all the forgotten, impoverished, struggling poor people of Eastern Europe. In this instance, naturalism is intertwined with poetry as seamlessly as the myths hidden in the silence of the plains mix with the wild curses of the tavern’s patrons.
Borbély creates a world that is both foreign and entirely recognizeable, banal yet extraordinary. He creates a home — a familiar, troubled home. This is also mirrored in the events unfolding on stage.
Director: Bálint Botos
