Richard III was a great success in Budapest

The Harag György Company guest performed in Budapest with its production of Richard III: the production directed by István Albu opened the 13th Madách International Theatre Meeting (MITEM), Hungary’s largest international theatre festival.
Following the announcement of the guest performance in February, tickets for the production — awarded two UNITER prizes for Best Performance and Best Direction — sold out very quickly. The April 10 performance was attended by nearly 650 people, including additional seating.
Richard III attracted not only Budapest’s festival audience and theatre professionals from Hungary, but also many people from Satu Mare and Transylvania now living in Budapest. Some of them had not seen the production on its home stage, yet did not want to miss the experience. The performance was also attended by the directors of the Romanian Cultural Institutes in Budapest and Vienna.

With the Budapest performance, the number of capitals where the company has staged Richard III rose to three, as the production had previously been invited to festivals in Bucharest and Chișinău.
Following the performance, an audience meeting took place in the first-floor foyer of the National Theatre, moderated by Edit Kulcsár, dramaturg of the National Theatre. After the discussion with the creators and actors, members of the audience also had the opportunity to ask questions.
Artistic Director István Bessenyei Gedő was asked about the company’s professional development and strategies over the past fifteen years, thanks to which the Harag György Company is now regarded as one of Romania’s leading theatre companies. Important milestones on this journey include the company’s appearances at MITEM, invitations to Romania’s National Theatre Festival (FNT), and the success of Richard III last year, when the company turned three UNITER nominations into two awards.
This year again, the Harag György Company received the highest number of nominations among Hungarian-language theatre companies in Romania, earning five nominations in total. The highly anticipated awards gala will take place on May 25 at the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest.
Director István Albu spoke about the production’s directorial concept and the theatrical style that has become his artistic trademark in recent years: integrating the songs of well-known bands into the narrative structure and dramaturgy of the performances. Csongor Zsolt Nagy, who plays the title role, shared insights into the collaborative creative process, with special emphasis on working together with the live band while building the central Shakespearean character.


Attila Vidnyánszky, director of Budapest’s National Theatre and MITEM, also personally congratulated the company on the production. Responding to comments from the audience, he noted that while many outstanding companies — including numerous Romanian productions — have appeared at the international festival, very few companies can claim to have been invited to MITEM three times over the course of its thirteen-year history.
The Harag György Company previously participated in earlier editions of the festival with two world premieres: Pornó, written and directed by András Visky, and Rasputin, directed by Sardar Tagirovsky. Incidentally, Tagirovsky — who is also a resident director of the company — is represented at this year’s festival as well, this time with a production staged for the Almetyevsk Tatar Drama Theatre from Tatarstan.