Emese Fábián

26. November 2019.

Legacy, a production by Horizon Group, a theatre company that often focuses on social issues, is a production by Yvette Feuer and Roland Rába and aims to portray the relationship between a mother and her son, Alice and Martin Miller, using a virtual dialogue based on excerpts and transcripts from their books. The production may be looked upon in a number of ways…

Throughout the play, the relationship between mother and son unfolds along the major nodes of the biography, elevated from everyday life. The production is minimalistic, relies almost exclusively on the presence of the actors: there is no set, no props and the only setting for the narrative at the premiere was the large room of the HPS KultSalon, a late bourgeois apartment. We are moving in a groundless world, an intellectual space with almost no handholds, dominated by the tension of opposites…The performance seeks to embrace and make visible the space, fraught with shifts and transitions, in which the roles are permeable. Martin takes on the role of the interrogating, questioning abuser, or the suffering child. Among other things, he reproaches his mother for not defending him against his father and for hiding his Jewishness, while Alice can explain everything. The question is, of course, to whom the explanation is acceptable. Meanwhile, the harsh light in the room does not dim for a moment, the almost disturbing glare confirming that nothing can remain a secret here.