Viktor Kovács & Dominik Kovács szin
Viktor Kovács & Dominik Kovács
Ice Cake
meringue square and frozen meat in one act
The setting of the black comedy Ice Cake is a pastry shop in the Hungarian countryside where confectionary fragrances mingle with the aroma of pork stew, and conflicts arise from the co-dependent relationship of the widowed owner and his grown-up daughter.
As we discover the causes of their emotional wounds, which they have tended over the decades, the disappearance of an entire era is sketched. We witness moments just before and just after the ultimate disappearance of this often-talked-about, bygone period.
Commanding his kingdom of sugar is Papa Gyuri. Deprived of his family’s land under Communism, he spends his life oppressing his daughter Schatzi, who only longs for pure love. As a joke, on her 10th birthday, he gave her an unsliceable ice cake as a present.
Schatzi becomes antisocial and aggressive, passing this on to her supposedly half-witted son Csaba. Schatzi awaits Csaba’s homecoming, so she can stuff him with food, but he is a constant reminder of her botched marriage. Her alcoholic husband Feri was driven to an emotional collapse by Schatz’s family, and he finally drank Drano out of despair. As a result of her misery with Feri, Schatzi allows the advances of her eccentric neighbours, the two bachelor Banga brothers. Fatherly and motherly love is degraded to the point of sheer physicality. The ice cake emerges as a symbol for the characters, whose souls are on the verge of freezing completely. Eventually, the atmosphere of tense expectation culminates in tragedy and then shock, as we hear through Banga brothers’ homicide evaluation game: “A woman.” “Who?” “Her father.” “With what?” “A kitchen knife.” “Why?” “Just ’cuz.” The mark: exceptional!