Forte Company: Your Kingdom, Trafó, 22 February
- 2 Feb 2017 8:00 AM
“He still knows what’ll silence a pub,” wrote Ádám Bodor, and it’s true: the tragically-fated Sándor Tar knew the depths of Hungarian society like no other. His heroes were history’s exiled: the humiliated, the crippled, the little people squeezed to the edge of the map, to the fringes of society, the ones never dealt in. Scorned workers who spent their entire lives building, so to speak, socialism only to be left to fend for themselves, and to eventually be crippled and killed by the system change.
Your kingdom, or perhaps ‘Thy kingdom’, gave me a first-hand glimpse into the humming, steaming and whirring factory floors of 80s socialist Hungary where jokes and gossip are tossed around like cigarettes.
Into the dingy hallways of the workers’ residence. And into the smoke, cough and hush of the 90s söröző.
Queued up to clock in were Whistler the brigade leader, Bucket the stammering water-boy, Jackdaw who got his name from his bird, and Nanny Nándi who’d get you a coffee or a condom for a good price.
Forte Company are specialists of musical, physical theatre, so they chuffed, buzzed and rotated as they guided us through the rooms of their factory life. Until one day, socialism seemed to cave in and we watched them peter on alone back to the village.
Sándor Tar's stories have been polished until they shine in this adaptation by Tibor Keresztury and Forte Company.
Now part of the Trafó repertoire, see it next on 22 February. All performances have English subtitles.
Photo: Marci Mónus
Source: Trafo.hu
Address: 1094 Budapest, Liliom u. 41.,
Tel.: (+36 1) 456 2040
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