TÉREY, JÁNOS – A NIBELUNG_LAKÓPARK

TÉREY, JÁNOS – A NIBELUNG_LAKÓPARK

The Nibelung Apartments

(2004. Fantasy based on Richard Wagner, verse. III – Hagen or the Hate Speech. Catastrophy Play in 3 acts, 38 scenes. Characters: 19 men, 10 women; can be played by 9 man, 5 women)

Térey’s trilogy places the heroes of Wagner’s well-known opus into our contemporary reality, transposing the demigods, heroes, goblins and Valkyries into business managers, party heroes, drug dealers, shopaholics and yuppies. The tetralogy finds an endlessly deep poetic language, spiced with various quotations, paraphrases, merging the popular slang of our days with the purest forms of poetry.

(III. Hagen or the Hate Speech) Hagen prepares his revenge methodically and patiently: he wishes to kill everybody who had offended him or opposed him. First he sends an anthrax envelope to Siegfried, just to cause panic at Gibichung, where he took Hagen’s managerial seat. In the mean while Fasolt and Fafner, the two mega investors, build up the millennial Worms company, also the symbol of Siegfried’s power and the hundred-store Notung tower. This tower is itself Hagen’s number one target: he wishes to blow it all up during peak hours. But first he sends a virus to infect the computers of the Walsungswerke afflicting a fatal blow to the company’s stock market position. He rejoices in the panic caused, which engulfs the until then fearless and risk ready Siegfried, just like the citizens of the ‘sinful city’. Brünnhilde, who knows what Hagen is up to, visits Siegfried and asks him to stay away from work the next day. The two lovers meet for one last time. The next day the Notung tower collapses, taking five thousand lives. Siegfried and Gunther hide in the Rhine Park, but there is no escape from Hagen. Gunther pleads his step brother for mercy but in vain. He engages in a duel with Hagen, who shoots him in the back and also kills Brünnhilde who just drops by, after he had been unable to win her heart. The Rhine Park is engulfed by flames. Hagen is finally killed by Gutrune.

János TÉREY (1970-)

He graduated at ELTE Arts Faculty and has been working as a freelance writer since 1998. After publishing several volumes of poetry and short stories he became a frequently staged playwright in Hungary. He re-translated wonderfully many classical plays. An openness to history, cruel irony, strong embeddedness into language and culture are the hallmarks of his works. His plays paint a sharp, multi-layered ironic image of the moral crisis of the Millennium – both on a local and an European level.