Performances

If we were to summarize extremely succinct and simplified the Odyssey of Ulysses, the story would sound as follows: the hero stayed away from Ithaca for twenty years. During the first ten he fought in the Trojan war, while in the following ten he struggled to get home, to his family. His Odyssey can be tackled form multiple perspectives, but it remains at the same time concealed due to its richness. The Odyssey dates back to 8th c. BC and it is attributed to Homer. Along the centuries that passed since the genesis of the epopee, a number of literary, musical and film adaptation have been created, some of these merely retell the story, while others try even more: reinterpretations and transcriptions.

The performance from the Hungarian State Theatre "Csiky Gergely" Timișoara does not use only the Homeric epic, but it is also based on the novel Peace in Ithaca. The adaptation written by Márai Sándor proposes a special view, in which the mediation on Ulysses' fate almost destroys the mythical image of the hero. Ulysses' image defying the gods and the series of his adventures, are outlined through the reminiscences of his wife, Penelope and his son, Telemachus. Through their human, terrestrial, profane perspective we see a Man, who "sat at men's table, and slept in women's beds". But their memories emphasize more than that - two lives: one which was abandoned and another one which had not yet started, that is an existence without solution. During the twenty years of waiting, in Ithaca a new regime was installed, a life in which the one who returned, cannot find his place anymore, even if life spins around him, or, more precisely, around his absence. At the same time, during twenty years, under the impact of loses, hits and women, a personality developed, that cannot be integrated in the life that moved forward without him. The moment that Penelope and Telemachus had been waiting for so long does not come with Ulysess' return, but with his death. The profane dimension of the performance is complemented by the wonderful Baroque opera called The Return of Ulysses, composed by Claudio Monteverdi. This extends some of the moments in the story, expands the terrestrial space and time, respectively the scenic space, rendering a sacred aspect to the impulses and feelings.