Evgeny Shvarts

The Shadow

Translated by Ágnes Osztovits

Main stage

The Scholar
Balázs Bodolai
 
The Shadow
Ferenc Sinkó
 
Pietro
Attila Orbán
 
Annunciata, his daughter
Éva Imre
 
Julia Giulli
Andrea Vindis
 
The Princess
Rita Sigmond
 
Prime Minister
Loránd Farkas
 
Minister of Finance
Lóránd Váta
 
Caesar Borgia, journalist
András Buzási
 
The Doctor
Gábor Viola
 
Six Shadows
Melinda Kántor , Júlia Laczó , , Alpár Fogarasi , Csaba Marosán , Zsolt Vatány

directed by
Niky Wolcz
 
dramaturg
Niky Wolcz
 
set and costume design
Carmencita Brojboiu
 
choreography
Lóránt András
 
director's assistant
Gábor Viola
 
designer's assistant
Ilona Lőrincz
 
stage manager
Pál Böjthe

Date of the opening: June 24, 2015
Date of opening: 24 June 2015

Duration: 2h without intermission.

“A man without a shadow is the saddest tale in the world”, says Annunciata, the positive character of The Shadow. To lose our shadow or our reflection: it's a recurrent theme in world literature and art. It was written about many times in the past and has been written of more recently as well: starting from Pygmalion, to Chamisso’s The Wonderful Story of Schlemihl Pete, up to Dostoyevky’s The Double. It appeared in Offenbach’s Hoffman Tales and also in Andersen’s tales. Svarc’s play combines all these works and adapts them into a grotesque political fairy tale with absurdist humour, where we find explicit references to what it was like to live in the Stalinist era. However, besides the parable of dictatorship, the personal life of the characters and the hidden meaning of their dreams and their search for themselves is also important.

The Scientist, traveling to a strange, southern country in order to study it, chooses from two loves the one that is not worthwhile, and so loses his shadow. But at the end of the story, because of true love, a miracle happens that solves everything. The ego that was separated reaches the end of his journey, where both the Shadow and true love must find their new places in the world: separately, depending on whether they stand in the light of the Moon, the Sun or the spotlights.