Premiers - 2022/2023

Shining Jeromos, a stage play by Áron Tamási won the drama competition of the Transylvanian Fine Arts Guild and the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj in 1936.  At first glance, it is a realistic, even downright naturalistic story, but we soon get a sense of mystical powers working in the background.

French romantic composer Hector Berlioz goes to see his childhood love Estelle Duboeuf and proposes to elope with the decent grandmother, taking her away from her family. They recall the passion of their youth, buried deep later on, conforming to conventions. But it’s never too late to “stop time”. True love lives on agelessly in everyone, it just takes courage to experience it.

- Beside the poem's charm and humour, this production is also about the Berehove company, i.e. that theatre is a means of cultural survival. We do not rearrange Petőfi's poem, but we start from the premise that the members of this company are sitting here with their suitcases because of the war and cannot be at home. Petőfi, who appears on stage, quotes from the Transcarpathian passages of his Travel Letters and we think of home... This is a playful and free performance, our contribution to the Petőfi memorial year celebrating the 200th anniversary of the poet's birth.

Count, politician, father and martyr – János Esterházy is one of the few 20th century statesmen who set an example for us, despite his tragic life. The National Theatre presents the trajectory of the 'Star of the Uplands' (present-day Southern Slovakia) to mark the Memorial Year commemorating the 120th anniversary of the birth of 'God's Servant János Esterházy'.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle is one of Bertolt Brecht's best-known plays. He wrote it in the United States in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II. It was premiered in 1954 by the Berliner Ensemble, founded by Brecht. It is where Brecht's concept of 'epic theatre', a fundamental feature of his dramaturgy, is most clearly demonstrated. The play is inspired by an ancient Chinese legend and King Solomon's parable in the Bible, in both of which women are subjected to what seems a cruel ritual motherhood test.

'Hypocrisy is a trendy sin, so like all trendy sins, it is a virtue', says Aleksandar Popovski, who returns to the National Theatre after directing The Master and Margarita. – This is the basic idea of Don Juan's last monologue, which reflects Molière's scathing view of hypocrisy.

The play's protagonist is Livey Kaplan, the legendary UN Secretary General who in the course of his long life united all of humanity in a single state. But instead of the unity he had hoped for, the world plunged into even more terrible historical cataclysms leading to the failure of Kaplan's utopian project.