Dementia

A world famous psychiatric hospital in Hungary was forced to close down a few months ago. The building has since become dilapidated; the garden is overgrown with weeds and a handful of patients have been left to vegetate alone on the fourth floor. The patients with developed dementia are living in the empire of amnesia... We have to face the following questions: How could society ever profit from one mental patient living a few years longer? What is the point of helping those who suffer when it all leads to death anyway? And besides, suffering is what propels humanity. When we numb ourselves with modern medicine we forget about religion and philosophy for good, albeit humanity found shelter in them before. May we presume the contradiction that death is Man's only hope and main human right?

This production of the Proton Theatre, which shifts from documentary-like realism to a more abstract world of the subconscious, manages to create an operetta-like reality wrapped in a postmodern melodrama that is frighteningly similar to our own daily life, insofar as every society is best characterized by how it treats its elderly and those livings with disabilities.

"Budapest’s Proton Theatre’s production Dementia, directed by Kornél Mundruczó, is a shrill, biting reality-satire on the Hungarian condition. It explodes with cynicism." (Neue Züricher Zeitung - Switzerland)

"Those elements needed for a harsh satire of society (always crucial in the often off-handed, but at the same time shocking Mundruczó productions) can be all found here. Certain psychiatric gimmicks are unveiled (like in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest), there is a bizarre hospitalization of the doctor and the nurse, and a Marthaler-like absurd fridge which emits classical music when its door is opened. All these elements work so that the play resonates with the present time; moreover, it holds a mirror up to us." (nachtkritik.de - Germany)

"Mundruczó’s piece entitled Dementia takes place in a splendidly wild, post-Communist, bleak backstage ruin rendered in hyper-realism, filled with numerous "queer" happenings and visual ideas. One of the most entertaining evenings." (taz.de - Germany)

"The production entitled Dementia by Kornél Mundruczó is a fantastically insolent and at the same time disconsolate contribution to this year’s Theatre Biennial." (Frankfurter Rundschau - Germany)

"Mundruczó Kornél is not a man of theory. His international co-production Dementia is an angry, incisive farce, lavishly executed with the welcome impudence of a tale." (Süddeutsche Zeitung - Germany)

"Where Mundruczó really excels, however, is his facile employment of different genres and techniques to create a kind of protean stage show that lurches from theatre to musical to film to concert. Curtains come down when you least expect it, the multi-level set folds in to become a horror house, and actors burst into song and dance when words fail them. It's jolting, bizarre and unapologetic." (The Business Times - Singapore)

"In the bizarre and grotesque piece, Mundruczó inserts operetta melodies with a dark irony, since his doctor invented music therapy for the patients with dementia. (...) The performance brilliantly demonstrates that the stubborn hard-core aesthetics of the Hungarian director are one-of-a-kind, even in the international market." (deutschlandfunk.de - Germany)

"Thanks to the musical form, which was totally new and peculiar, Dementia features a unique ensemble of eight fantastic actor-musicians. It could be described most precisely as a strange combination of Viennese Blood (Wiener Blut), some rock music, and the Beggars’ Opera (composer: János Szemenyei). Fascinating!" (Frankfurter Neue Presse)

"The actors are breathtakingly good, especially Lili Monori, who plays the demented operetta diva, though we could also single out the singing János Szemenyei as a perfect operetta star. All this unfolds on the remarkably imposing set of a hospital in disrepair, eventually sealed off." (theaterkrant.nl - The Netherlands)

"Proton Theatre’s Dementia is an emotional rollercoaster ride. (...) The strong cast served up convincing and endearing characters beyond the caricatures, especially Nurse Dóra played by Annamária Láng." (Today Online - Singapore)

"The play doesn’t even give its characters a chance. It invites in Death and treats it as freedom, since these people are not needed by anyone anywhere." (Györgyi Kalas - index.hu)

"Entering the psychiatric hospital and walking beside the patients’ hospital beds, we become part of the world of the performance, its physical space, from very first moment. Moreover, we immediately assume a role, as Professor Szatmáry (Roland Rába) welcomes us as visitors on the open day of the Dementia Hospital. We soon receive the first request:  a small financial contribution to save the clinic. Within the first five minutes of the performance, a great burden and social responsibility has been placed on our shoulders. What soon becomes apparent is that if we let this psychiatric hospital, highly respected all over Europe, shut down; the plot’s further developments, the fate of the patients, and collective suicide will all be our responsibility. But do we have any means to forestall this conclusion? The figure of the rich and cunning Bartonek (Ervin Nagy), who emerges from the audience, seems to suggest there is none: only money counts. Thanks to his wealth and connections, Bartonek can buy the hospital from the state and eject the incapacitated patients onto the streets. Nevertheless, we cannot totally blame him, since his point is correct. Out of the budget to hospitalize these vegetative patients, dozens of children from the poorest regions of Hungary could be saved from starvation. And why should we want to prolong the life of the elderly, who are a burden on society, if we all die at some point anyway?
This latest production by Mundruczó is embarrassingly humorous, parodying elements of operetta and comedy in order to address important social matters. What we find here is the surrealist, comic endgame of human life." (Klaudia Antal - szinhaz.net)