He graduated from the Faculty of Directing at the University of Arts in Tirgu Mures, a former student of the director Laszlo Bočardi, under the strong influence of the theater practice and poetics of Radu Afrim, formed, from a certain point, by Tompa Gabor, to whom he was an assistant director and who then invited him to stage on a prestigious stage Botond Nagy of the Hungarian State Theater in Cluj-Napoca, despite her youth, does not feel even the slightest complex in front of the great playwright. The works of Chekhov, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Tennessee Williams, Witold Gombrowicz were staged, most often, in an iconoclastic style, from an extremely modern perspective.

Now it’s Shakespeare’s turn Macbeth which the young director staged in the German section of the Radu Stanka National Theater in Sibiu. No, Botond Nagy doesn’t give us that Macbeth integral, but one Macbeth essentialized and synthetic. The director-producer has put together an extremely concentrated version of the play, and manages to condense the text, which normally takes more than three hours, into less than 80 minutes.

The thing is not completely new and it was not invented by Botond Nagy. This was attempted by the outstanding director Thomas Ostermeier in a wonderful version of the cult play, Hamlet. Here, Peter Kerek went even further, giving another one a few years ago Hamlet with only three characters.

Does this version manage to convey the essence of the song? More precisely, does the story remain the same, or is what we see understandable? Undeniably, yes! As well as the dominant characters remain as clear, clear and relevant as possible. Of those characters who retain their right to appear on stage. The cursed and demonic couple are left with only a witch who brings a terrible prophecy that makes Macbeth a failure and who, as is well shown in a wonderful recent book (The charm of ruined lives, Editura Humanitas, Bucharest, 2022) Professor Angelo Miccievichi, makes success simply “a spell and nothing more” It is about Macduff and Banquo. Both are sentenced to death, like Duncan and his family.

On the gray-dominated screen wall, the main part of the scenery, masterfully created by Cosmin Florea, the names of those whom Macbeth chooses to remove appear crossed out, with a truncated line. With the help of Andriy Rants, the author of the video design, the viewer’s visual field is bombarded with a set of symbolic images (a tiger, a bouquet of lilies as a symbol of death, a cross, a calla flower, a leafless tree). , human faces covered in red paint, somewhat suggestive of Birnam Wood), as well as some images of the war in Ukraine. The latter images have the same relative utility and purpose as the show with Gull from TNB, directed by Eugene Djebelianu. I also thought Lady Macbeth’s mini sex scene before she died was relatively serviceable. Three-dimensional shooting, lighting design proposed by Cristian Niculescu, strong changes in music and sound design created by Claudio Urse demand the maximum of the viewer’s senses and perceptive capabilities.

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