Freeloaders comedy

Charlatans who use patriotic sentiment to manipulate, cheats who use their pasts to blackmail them, naïve youths and the adults who shamelessly exploit them. Happiness, or at least the search for happiness. A little Hungarian reality. It’s the 1870s. We’re in Pest-Buda. The genre is comedy. The author, Gergely Csiky, is one of the most exciting dramatists of his time, a Catholic priest and a professor of theology. The play, which was first performed in 1880 in the National Theatre, has returned to its place of birth. Csiky caricaturizes the preening patriotism of his day, yet one has the sense that the play is very much about the present. It is a superb social sketch with finely written characters and roles.