Lajos Parti Nagy

Mausoleum

play

Translated by::

The Mausoleum is a scary mockery, which was performed with great success by the Katona József Theatre in Budapest in 1995. Behind this success lies a genuine literary achievement. In this absurdist story, petty gangsters cremate a blackmailing Ukrainian mafioso in the oven of a confectionery factory. And while the creams are baking in the cellar, the inhabitants of the run-down tenement house, where all the horror is taking place, are each trying to come to terms with the bizarre case according to their life strategy. The author brilliantly combines ironic and lyrical elements, conveying complex emotions through his composed dialogue.

The world left untouched by the regime change seems to be the space and mode of existence that the author evokes with compelling language. Political change has done little to change the fate of the run-down tenants living in Budapest's run-down tenement blocks, like one another, hostage to each other. The first sentence of the author's instruction, which reads 'It is yesterday-some time between '86 and '94 -in the half-past of the Hungarian present', also refers to this. According to critic Tarján Tamás, "The Mausoleum is a play of total disillusionment, which is not the characters or the dilapidated setting, but the age and the ideology: fifty years taken away from world history—and Hungarian history."

 

Synopsis translated by: Vivien-Tamara Sárközi

Cast of characters:

Premier: 0000.00.00