https://youtu.be/4IePAzu5l2w?t=7
This fascinating experience was not really a version or adaptation of play but piece of creative theatre where MND used as a device/starting point. I should say at the start that I do not have a word of Hungarian but I know MND very well so just for those circumstances it was a fascinating experience. I gathered, from an interval chat with a Hungarian speaker what the initial scenario was (patients in a drug rehab facility who were to get more funds for drama-focused treatment ( a performance of MND) for the visiting Inspector (or calling perhaps…) to help make their case.
It was like nothing I've seen before. It was, in all aspects, admirably theatrical and creative and with a very sophisticated soundscape – there was seamless movement from amplified voice to unamplified (although a number of performers were not projecting quite enough to be clearly heard). But how much am I missing in having NO language? And the songs...Some were well known but I suspect I may have missed at least some layers of significance without knowing the language and precise dramatic situation into which they were inserted. I did recognise a number of MND elements, particularly in the second part. I asked myself at the time if there a political level too but was assured by a Hungarian-speaking friend who had seen the show that this was indeed a significant element – possibly the main one? I was fascinated to realise that at the end I was left with many more questions than answers but, paradoxically, the experience was rather marvellous one. References to ‘company improvisations' was a clearly significant element.
I am now looking forward to the same remarkable team’s Romeo and Juliet, which, I gather, is much more of an adaption of the play rather than a work where the Shakespearean element was just that – an element in the newly-minted drama.