Disgrace

Disgrace, the novel by J. M. Coetzee shows a true picture of the era we live in, even though the story is about David Lurie, a professor of romantic literature from Cape Town, and it takes place in the far Republic of South Africa after apartheid. The novel breaks the barriers created by the lines of forces of local society, and is able to show our big European questions with sharp precision. The story shows the mutual fears and problems that we all deal with on a continent obviously facing big rearrangements. In David’s character we get to know a white African, an always privileged snobbish intellectual, who loses his power and every point of reference in the new social system. David’s fall is also the fall of a world that allows the colonizer white people not to deal with their past and the consequences of their deeds even after several hundred years.  It is also a warning for the future collapse of the European world, in which we all were brought up and that we all know so well. A stranger knocks on David Lurie’s door and he has no choice but to let him in. But when he opens the door, a new structure of the world is revealed to him, one which he has no answers for.  With the rise of the masses and the oppressed, David loses everything. However in a strange way in the midst of his biggest dispossession, he finds the gift of freedom. 

"In the staging by Kornél Mundruczó, we find the hard-core version of the novel Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, which is also a lesson not to look away." (Der Landbote - Switzerland)

"Mundruczó is the best, most impatient of opportunists, always at the adaptee’s side." (The Vienna Review - Austria)

"Disgrace is a very provocative performance about the battle for survival and about dignity." (Divadelni noviny - Czech Republic)

"Mundruczó brings to Europe Coetzee’s questions about the coexistence of blacks and whites after Apartheid. It is a power play of the most fearsome sort." (De Standaard - Belgium)

"The theatre of Kornél Mundruczó is partly shocking, partly touching. The Hungarian director has a great sense for making his radical means seem necessary. His raw naturalism, however, is never sensational, since his clever dramaturgical techniques and his wonderful actors are always perfectly natural. And even if we see something we would not desire to see, we understand that what we see, we must see." (Sonntags Zeitung - Switzerland)

"The actors of the Proton Theatre exist with the same intensity in the story’s most cheerful moments and its most brutal twists. Dirty jokes, opera arias, ethnic dances, fast changes of rhythm: we see a highly witty parody of the most stupid sorts of racism which are haunting present-day Hungary." (Demokraatti - Finland)

"Mundruczó loves dense, concentrated pictures on a stage with plenty of props. This makes his direction intriguing." (Berliner Zeitung - Germany)

"Mundruczó’s panoramic, expertly realized production." (American Theatre - USA)

"Mundruczó paints a picture of a new future that is void of everything we consider European culture. European culture doesn’t give answers to lots of things, and in its great pride it forgot to foster relationships to those who may keep it alive. Therefore losing the war is necessary and evident. This is how everything that represented David Lurie’s life is dissolved, and this is how the barren animalistic instinctive life becomes valid." (István Ugrai - 7óra7)

"Kornél Mundruczó always works with strong effects. Sometimes he directs scenes that are difficult to watch. He sticks our noses into the cruelty of the world. (…) He builds on visceral effects. He investigates the animal within humans and how it often breaks out. (…) When something previously thought unbearable ends, and afterwards chaos is born, it is often followed by lots of pain, doubt and uncertainty. From this place, one cannot guess what will happen next. This makes the story rather similar to ours in a sense. It is no accident then that Mundruczó considers this story that takes place in South Africa, to be his most Hungarian performance. This is not up to the forced showing of Hungarian motives, but rather the ability for empathy and the sensitivity for problems, and also whether the performance really raises the questions that we struggle with day by day. And if anyone is, he is really raising those…" (Gábor Bóta - Népszava)

"Watching Kornél Mundruczó’s staging, the Hungarian spectator would not think of South Africa at all. Instead you will have flashes of our own history, the immediate past, and the events of our present. You will recall the years of transition and the unexpected consequences, and the silence about the recent decades. The supposed or real grievances that have piled up since, poverty, murders in the immediate past, racism, homo- and xenophobia, demonstrations and anti-demonstrations, good or bad-intentioned outsider dilettantes horning in; all which will only add fuel to the fire. But the saddest thing is the radicalization of young people and the black and white answers politicians give to complicated questions that cannot be answered in black and white terms. This issue is addressed, as well as the deep-rooted deformed hatred that so many - but not enough - of us just cannot comprehend." (Tímea Papp - Fidelio)

"This performance full of Brechtian V-effects (songs, addressing the public, etc.), brilliant associations and gags is basically true to the novel. (…) Mundruczó’s staging works with giant emotional amplitudes. It is totally brutal and rudely ordinary at the same time, as well as sensual, funny, absurd-grotesque and poetic. What the audience is left with are questions, this is not the theatre where upon leaving the audience learns a lesson. In this performance, which is strictly tied to the existence, there are no explanations but only situations and traps. The performance of Proton Theatre is alive in all its little details – especially in the Hungarian theatre landscape which can follow the nationalistic tendency towards sentimentalism, stupidity, compromise and spiritual laziness - this production stands out as courageous and particular. All episodes of Disgrace by Kornél Mundruczó are well-thought-out and elaborate. Every element of the performance contains great rhythm, for instance the "cinemascope" set of Márton Ágh, the musical collage of the finely sung "Nessun dorma" ("None shall sleep") by János Szemenyei, the dramaturgy of Viktória Petrányi and the teamwork of the actors – all are honorable, quality work." (Krisztina Horeczky - HVG)

“Wild. Brutal. Cruel. Unjust. Contradictory. Dirty. Cathartic. Destructive. Sad. Outrageous. Fearful. Shocking. Violent. Naturalistic. These are the first adjectives that come to my mind when seeing Kornél Mundruczó’s performance Disgrace, and also when thinking back on the year 2020 with all its worldwide events. This was a tough year, indeed. From all aspects. Cruel and harsh. Bloody and lethal. Like this performance with a message that is extremely brutal and profound. Yet, if we really listen, we can perhaps detect in it perspectives never considered prior to the present year. What is more, I watched and experienced this production through the filter of the pandemic, shifts on the world stage, and changes in power dynamics and the relationship between man and humanity.  From this angle, it’s as though the staging reflected directly on today’s matters. It is painfully fresh directorial work, even though the piece originates from earlier.” (Barnabás Sáhó - szinhazatnekunk.hu)