Performances / Szigligeti Company / 2025-2026
N. Richard Nash
The Rainmaker
romantic comedy
Translated by:: András Sütő
In Nash's play, the action takes place on an American farm, around the Curry family's home, where a prolonged drought has taken its toll on everyone. However, beyond this natural disaster, there is also a drought of the human soul… Although the family is close-knit and loving, this only makes Lizzie’s relative loneliness more painful—she is the only woman in the household. Then, suddenly, Starbuck appears: a strange figure, like a modern-day magician, who offers to conjure rain. As he does, he senses that the young woman, withering in her work and inner solitude, also needs a kind of life-giving rain. What he does is not a conventional seduction, for he genuinely means well. Meanwhile, he chants his spells at the sky and the weather. But despite his incantations, the sky remains unchanged, and the men of the family send him away. And then, out of nowhere, thunder rumbles, lightning flashes, and the rain begins to fall—the life-giving and future-bringing downpour. Starbuck, aware of his own charlatanism, feels that he has accomplished something beautiful: he has restored hope and love to the Curry family and has regained his own sense of power.
Through this, the playwright also passes judgment on the American financial world and its selfishness, declaring faith and love victorious over the spiritual drought that idolizes the power of the dollar.
The title role was played by actor László Miske in celebration of his 20th anniversary in theatre, a milestone honored by both the theatre and its audience.
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