class="">Macbett

The play presents, through relentless humour, the public life that is animated and pushed into the realm of chaos by constantly stimulated hostility. At the same time, Ionesco’s Macbett talks about the absurdity of conspiracies. It addresses today’s spectator with surprising acuity. “Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a monster, while simultaneously also being a puppet, of course, and Lady Macbeth is herself a monster too. My Macbett is not a monster. He’s just as coward, vile and power-hungry as Duncan, Banco, Glamiss or Candor. He’s an ordinary man.” – says Ionesco about his caustic play that displays the intellectual and moral emptiness of man. It draws our attention to the fact that the political realm, ever since the Cold War years, is invaded by dozens of petty characters, devoid of ideas, who cling to power with bloody nails and see no further than the obtuse logic of defeating and destroying their political opponent. The chance that arose in the 1930s – that clowns permeated by their obsession with power, and who engage in politics under the spell of bloodbaths to be brought to power through free elections – is not a thing of the past, but an ever-present temptation that we better face rather than continue to repeat the horrors, permeated by the illusion of perceiving ourselves as being enlightened beings. (András Visky)

Photo credit: István Biró