This past weekend, two massive rotating wheels, mounted on a charcoal grey backdrop to imitate simultaneously a harmless record player and a sinister recording device, filled the Moore Theater stage at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. In this dual-purpose set piece, the audience could bear witness to the bizarre, unsettling mixture of Hungarian folk culture, Communist authoritarianism and pedophilia that comprise the play “Our Secrets.”
Béla Pintér, a Hungarian playwright, actor and director, wrote and directed “Our Secrets,” which premiered in 2013 at the Szkéné Theatre in Budapest, Hungary. Set in Budapest in the 1980s, the play revolves around the lives of several teachers at a Hungarian folk-dancing club and their struggles under an oppressive Communist state. The play’s main character, István Balla Bán, is a prodigious dancer and connoisseur of Hungarian folk music, but he is marred by a sexual attraction to his own 7-year-old stepdaughter. The play begins on uneasy footing when Balla Bán admits this incriminating information to a trusted therapist, and it grows steadily more suspenseful as he continues to interact with his stepdaughter. But the tale of an emotionally unhealthy man soon develops into something more when an acquaintance reveals himself to be a Communist intelligence officer who has bugged the office of Balla Bán’s therapist. Balla Bán is forced to choose between saving himself or betraying his dissident friend, Imre, while also dealing with the consequences of his perverted sexual attraction. The conflicts peak in the final scenes, during which Imre is arrested and Balla Bán commits suicide following his attempted molestation of Imre’s young son. These provocative plotlines were well-complemented by nostalgic light tricks and a live Hungarian folk band on the outskirts of the stage, which provide a glimpse of Hungarian culture while facilitating transitions between increasingly disturbing scenes.
Despite his obvious intention to offer a nuanced look at authoritarian police, Hungarian folk culture and political division, Pintér consistently allows his obsession with breaking taboos to overshadow the more interesting aspects of the play. His decision to involve pedophilia in the central conflict was poorly executed and removes all agency from sexual abuse victims. In “Our Secrets,” Balla Bán’s attraction to his stepdaughter serves as a plot device to develop his character and tone of the play. While today’s popular culture welcomes anti-heroes with open arms, it is generally difficult to appreciate a character who takes advantage of his own stepdaughter. Zoltán Friedenthal did a masterful job portraying the guilt and anguish of such a complex character, but the same effect for the plot and character could have easily been achieved if Balla Bán was, for instance, homosexual. Undeniably, the worst decision on the part of Pintér was to include Balla Bán’s stepdaughter, Timike, as an onstage character. Friedenthal is talented enough to be able to display the emotions of a self-despising pedophile without forcing the audience to endure scenes like the one in which he receives oral sex from Timike. The scene was disturbing to say the least, in part because Timike is played by an adult woman who nevertheless does an outstanding job in the role of a two-dimensional child.
Legendary playwright Anton Chekhov established a well-known dramatic principle known as “Chekhov’s gun.” The principle essentially states that if one introduces a loaded gun in the first act, then the gun should be used by the second act. In “Our Secrets,” Chekhov’s gun seems to have malfunctioned. Immediately as the show begins, the audience is introduced to Balla Bán’s perverse sexual desires, and he is told by his therapist that he needs to leave his family or there will be consequences. These events set an expectation that at some point later in the play, Balla Bán’s true nature will be revealed to his friends and family. Pintér, however, simply allows those expectations and that feeling of suspense to seep into the audience until the play’s end. Balla Bán’s suicide gives the impression that the playwright could not give a succinct, proper climax. Although the audience’s constant state of suspense may offer a fair simulation of life under an authoritarian Communist regime, it negatively affects the other storylines. It becomes especially hard to enjoy the stellar performances of Pintér and Zsófia Szamosi as Imre and his Communist wife, Bea, respectively, when the viewer is constantly on the edge of his seat worrying about whether the next scene will involve the sexual assault of a child.
Still, Pintér created a remarkable performance that gave viewers a glimpse into a different culture during a period of conflict. Even if audience members left the theater a little more unsettled than when they entered, that change is simply a testament to what great actors and musicians can do when given a play with a disturbing premise.
