Hard to be a God

Two trucks are standing on the side of the road. Goods are being exchanged, three young women. A big plan is taking shape and its success would change everything in the blink of an eye. The key to unmasking the plan is the boy had been hidden from the world. There is no room for mistakes. Different rules apply inside the cargo hold of the truck and those who do not obey will never return home. There is a stranger among them, who could interfere, but he does not – he himself is following orders. His presence is like that of a God; silently watching his creations from a distance. For a while. But how long can one stay an observer?

"Breathtaking, East-European hardcore-reality theatre." (Der Standard - Austria)

"Zürich has never seen anything like this before! Even the well-experienced theatre fans could hardly collect themselves after the two-hour performance. I wonder whether the truck was a party vehicle from Pulp Fiction or rather a prototype from the post-Communist pornographic market of Hungary? What a peculiar mix of genius and evil! The creations of this much-awarded film and theatre director fly in the face of the Capitalist world. (...) Mundruczó’s frenzy scorches the viewers with beatings, violence and irony. He rides roughshod over the rest of us. He cuts us to pieces. Budapest is everywhere." (Tages Anzeiger - Switzerland)

"The false traces Mundruczó scattered, the splatter or the musical line, evaporate and serve merely as a functional structure. Instead, the terrain on which the performance moves is tragedy, in the broader sense of the term, from Aeschylus to the Elizabethan revenge play." (Art-O.eu - Italy)

"Mundruczó's performance, even if we do not want to attribute any political value to it, speaks of a Europe that is all about sex, money and violence, 'dancing on the edge of the abyss'." (Repubblica - Italy)

"Nudity, torture, intellectual terror and murder – Kornél Mundruczó confronts the spectator mercilessly with violence. (…) It may not be real blood that flows on stage, but watching this reality-show hurts. (…) Moments of sentimental yearning emerge in the musical interludes, when the actors in the lorry begin to make music with anything that comes to hand, be it a dustbin, an iron or a sewing machine." (nachtkritik.de - Germany)

"Kornél Mundruczó's staging of Hard to be a god comes frighteningly close. A fantastic cast crosses the borderline between reality and illusion." (Süddeutsche Zeitung - Germany)

"Hard To Be God is heartrending. The realistic environment and the acting captivate us all the way through." (toneel.blog.nl - The Netherlands)

"This production is one that you simply must see. It is a powerful portrayal of a horrible world that Mundruczó and his cast present in such a way that despite all your reservations you stay there and see it through. Fear, manipulation, dependency, hope, misfortune, indifference and stupidity have a shock effect, in places downright infuriating, but at every moment authentic. (…) All this, what is more, we can see in a performance by a wonderful cast." (Volkskrant - The Netherlands)

"An observer from another planet guides the spectators into the cells of our modern globalized (hell) world. Kornél Mundruczó’s staging of Hard To Be God depicts an aggressive and harsh reality with four young women held hostage by human traffickers. In our country, we easily shut our eyes to the embarrassing issue of human trafficking although this is an expressly topical and European problem.  This is why it is especially important to have and to welcome Proton Theatre’s guest performance." (nahaufnahmen.ch - Switzerland)

"A fathomless abyss, in which people are tortured without restraint. It all happens on two lorries, we are speaking of human trafficking. The women are going to Western Europe in hope of a better future, but there they will be used, soon be living as slaves, until finally, completely stripped of their rights, they become the suffering subjects of sadistic humiliation." (Recklinghäuser Zeitung - Germany)

"Mundruczó forces his audience to play God. The spectators look passively on the events taking place right before their eyes, events that are nastier and nastier. (…) The combination of the tableaux vivants on stage and the horrors projected on the screen shocks. Most of all because it confronts us with the fact that reality out there is in fact much crueller still." (cobra.be - Belgium)

"Part of Mundruczó’s talent is the courage to present a story which does not aim to be credible (…) yet it shakes a person to the core." (Le Mouvement - France)

"Naturally, such a large amount of distracting elements is clearly intended to create a conceptual excess that goes far beyond the effect of the individual details. Beneath the surface, somewhere halfway between Grand Guignol and comic noir, hides the text's authentic and defining leitmotif, written by Mundruczó himself in collaboration with Yvette Bíró. (...) The Hungarian director stages a powerful, harsh, painful and despairing metaphor for the fatal crisis that is currently unfolding on the old continent, a crisis that is first and foremost moral, but also ideological." (controscena - Italy)

"These are exactly the places where things that cannot come to light transpire. We are in a hidden corner of the Rotterdam Port. Around us, there are metal box containers, storage units lit by neon light and two trucks. In one of the trucks, there is an illegal tailoring workshop. The other one is full of tyres. (...) The style used by Kornél Mundruczó is totally realistic. The tailoring workshop is precisely detailed, and the acting leaves nothing to doubt either." (Recensies - The Netherlands)

"It’s an intensely horrific and emotional piece of theatre, and it is the best production Adelaide has seen in some time." (theatreguide.com.au - Australia)

"...a performance from about ten years ago, co-produced by the Proton Theatre with major European festivals, it is still shocking and meaningful. Hard to be a God deals with terrible and shocking themes, which nonetheless seem inevitable in this performance." (il manifesto - Italy)

"Welcome to Europe, or more precisely to the gloomy and apocalyptic vision of Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó. Mundruczó is one of the most interesting creators in theatre and film arts. In terms of his theatrical works, it would be enough to mention his highly authentic masterpiece Imitation of life, which he presented at the VIE Festival in Bologna in 2019. It was a poignant and surprising performance about the dynamics of relations of our times, which also functioned as a bitter portrait of a racist and exclusionary society. The same directorial and dramaturgical stroke of genius that we enjoyed in that grandiose work can be found in the production of It's Hard to be a God, performed at the Venice Biennale Theatre Festival." (Repubblica - Italy)