The ALKA.T causal theatre team’s first production, Fedra Fitness is a revised and developed version of Euripides’ play Hippolytus, adapted to the special venue and to the performers. A special point of interest in Fedra Fitness is that this is the first time that Tasnádi – with a rich theatre experience as a critic, dramaturg and author – has undertaken the task of directing his own work. His collaborators are excellent representatives of the Hungarian theatre scene: the cast contains beside such „great old” actors as Eszter Csákányi and Peter Scherer some younger actors who also come from the internationally known Krétakör Theatre and talented young members of the KoMa Company.
Phaedra, the beautiful queen, falls in love with her step-son and, rejected by him, she denounces him to her husband, claiming that he had raped her – this case, which ends tragically for all involved, is a basic story of humanity, with mythical roots. Its first known adaptation for the stage is that of Euripides, and for almost 2,500 years since then many playwrights have found it topical enough to adapt to their times.
István Tasnádi’s Fedra Fitness is definitely a contemporary work, but instead of simply transposing the tragic love story into the twenty-first century it so portrays the ancient legend as the life of today as to emphatically connect it with its mythical roots. Using a classical form with contemporary speech, showing archetypical human relations in today's well-known characters, using instruments of the antique theatre together with „post-dramatic” theatrical devices makes us see the subject in a double refraction, showing the myth together with our approach to it today.
Phaidra – Eszter CSÁKÁNYI
Set, costume: Rita VERECZKEI
This Fedra Fitness is the work of a director who deals equally well with words and images, who can build a mature structure and who has a synergistic relationship with his actors. (...) In the superb effect of the interchange of tragic and comic the actors have an excellent share – first and foremost Eszter Csákányi in the title role. (...) The others have to build characters rather than arches, and we can enjoy a series of better and better cameos. The two troupes with different backgrounds, ages and experience play together smoothly, in the most natural way.
Balázs Urbán, Színház (Theatre), 18 January 2009
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