Plays from Contemporary Hungary: ‘Difficult Women’ and Resistant Dramatic Voices. Edited and translated by Szilvi Naray. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2024. 257 pp.

Prah by György Spiró
Prime Location by György Spiró
Sunday Lunch by János Háy
The Dead Man by János Háy
The Bat by Krisztina Tóth

Reviewed by Jozefina Komporaly

This welcome addition to the Methuen Drama Play Collectionsseries draws attention to dramatic outputs from contemporary Hungary. The volume is rooted in the long-term practice of translator and theatre-maker Szilvi Naray, who has approached her English versions from the perspective of performability and has already staged several plays included in the volume with her Manchester-based theatre company Ignition Stage. Hoping to build on this precedent, the present volume invites further micro-budget productions and offers an opportunity for student and small-scale theatre companies to engage with “five witty and politically irreverent plays” by some of Hungary’s most highly prolific and successful authors. As it is often the case in Hungarian literature, all three authors are active in several literary genres – fiction and /or poetry in addition to drama – and all plays have been professionally produced in Hungary.

The rationale of this selection, however, is not so much a focus on commercial success but on highlighting alternative avenues in Hungarian theatre and offering a space for works and indeed authors in conflict with current Hungarian governmental and cultural politics. In her introduction, Naray outlines the situation of dissident voices in Hungary, emphasising the risks of non-adherence to the values of Viktor Orbán’s illiberal democracy and being demonised by the state-controlled press. The case of Krisztina Tóth is particularly pertinent here, seeing that as Naray observes, she had taken the difficult decision to move away from her home country as a result of systematic harassment and intrusion into her private life.

The book opens with an introduction that situates the discussion in the context of the current Hungarian theatre and political system, includes detailed author biographies and then moves on to the plays in English translation. In my view, this particular selection gains additional validity because it is the work of a translator-practitioner who is familiar with both the Hungarian and UK theatre system and has previously tested some of her translations in praxis (e.g. ‘Prah’, ‘The Bat’). As an academic and researcher, Naray has dedicated many years to this process, including a practice-based PhD at the University of Salford and ongoing promotion work via various cultural networks in the UK.

All five plays centre on strong female protagonists positioned within their respective family units. Family dramas are a staple of Hungarian theatre, and although some of the work deals with fairly specific aspects of Hungarian culture and Naray wishes to resist domestication, the translations have succeeded in making them travel across languages and become internationally relatable. The translations have also succeeded in transcending barriers in terms of conveying social critique, and this political stance is key to the selection and constitutes its merit. The plays and playwrights, however, are not exactly “unheard”. They may not be popular with current Hungarian government officials but other texts by Háy and Spiró have been translated into English before (there is even academic criticism in English on their work), whereas Tóth’s fiction and poetry have also been widely translated and she is regularly invited to international literary events. The fact that these voices aren’t entirely “unheard” does not make this volume less relevant though; if anything, it endorses the plays’ timeliness and importance.

As a brief indication of subject matter and approaches, Prah by György Spiró reflects on the cost of winning (the lottery) and how this undermines family dynamics, at the cusp of Hungary’s transition from communism to capitalism. Epitomising many families’ existential crisis at this time of unprecedented transition, the play centres on the Woman, the family’s matriarch, who maps out a range of moral dilemmas arising from this extraordinary shift, trying to weigh up losses and gains and striving to stick with what she feels to be the right thing:  an act of defiance that she perceives as an act of humanity. Prime Location, also written in Spiró’s trademark tragicomic style, meditates on the position of Hungary alongside other European countries, in the broader context of profit-making within a care home for the elderly. Individualism is epitomized by the character of Miss Judith, seen as defiant of expectations of her biological sex, always hungry for more and unapologetic of her success. Sunday Lunch by János Háy is an opportunity to address generational conflict through a traditional family get-together, juxtaposing contrasting perspectives and choices. The Mother is positioned as the force that keeps the family together against the odds, whilst the metaphor of the sachet of powdered soup metonymically amplifies this image to absurdist dimensions. The Dead Man also by János Háy, focuses on two parallel facets of female experience when dealing with grief: a woman who suddenly has to front her family in the wake of her husband’s war-time death, thus being catapulted into a position of public responsibility and authority, and her daughter, who opts for denial and refusal to move on from the past. The Bat by Krisztina Tóth confronts a mother and a nursery teacher following the disappearance of a rubber toy, in a grotesque portrayal of the nouveau riche in affluent urban areas. Envy, bullying, racism and class conflicts are central themes in this text in which the potential guilt of the protagonist is left unresolved, and by the end, everyone seems to have lost their moral compass and points of reference.

Although two of the authors are male (György Spiró and János Háy), the plays offer great parts for women, and Naray draws attention to her translation and editorial strategy whereby she was playing particular attention to the behaviour of female characters and the consequences thereof. She connects this approach to a feminist lens and calls it a feminine translation strategy. Situating a female translator and female characters centre stage is undoubtedly a valid political point and the plays do indeed hold up a microcosmic lens for helping to understand identity politics in present-day Hungary, but readers may have benefitted from slightly more detail on the practical operation of this particular translation and curatorial strategy.

Overall, this hybrid volume is a most enjoyable and informative read and it can appeal to the theatre profession, academia, as well as the general public interested in contemporary Hungary and/or Central and Eastern Europe. Due to the high-profile authors it includes, with other publications translated into English and various foreign languages, the collection can also interest further readers already familiar with the writers’ respective fiction or poetry. Last but not least, the plays’ scale (requiring small casts and modest props), can indeed attract micro-budget productions and offer a rare opportunity for students and small theatre companies looking to put on witty and subversive works.

Jozefina Komporaly is a London-based theatre academic and translator from Hungarian and Romanian. She is editor and co-translator of the collections How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients and Other Plays (Seagull, 2015), András Visky’s Barrack Dramaturgy (Intellect, 2017) and Plays from Romania: Dramaturgies of Subversion (Bloomsbury, 2021), and author of numerous publications on translation, adaptation and theatre. Her translations appeared in Asymptote, The Baffler, Columbia Journal, Los Angeles Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Words without Borders, World Literature Today, and were produced by Foreign Affairs, Trap Door, Theatre Y, Trafika Europe Radio, Menagerie Theatre. Recent publications include Mr K Released by Matéi Visniec (finalist for the 2021 EBRD Literature Prize), Story of a Stammer by Gábor Vida (Seagull Books, 2022), MyLifeandMyLife by Melinda Mátyus (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023). Her translation of Home by Andrea Tompa (Istros Books, 2024) was the recipient of a PEN Translates Grant. She is a member of the UK Translators Association. Website: https://jozefinakomporaly.com/