Premiere of Dievoushka in Sfantu Gheorghe

Béla Pintér deals with one of the most dramatic events in our history in his musical stage play Dievoushka with his usual humor and irony. The play takes place in 1942, one day before the Hungarian Second Army set off for the Don River. The performance is directed by Máté Hegymegi, this being his third work at the Tamási Áron Theatre. The performance takes place on February 25th.

April 20th, 1942, Érsekújvár, flag raising. According to the order of war, it is the next day that the regiment moves into Galanta, from where it begins its journey to Russia, to the Don River bend.

Captain Halász, Lieutenant Kovács, Private Mikó and Private Nyíri spend the last evening with their loved ones. However, to everyone’s surprise, the colonel’s wife is giving a farewell ball, at which appearance is mandatory by choice. Ármin Heinz, a Jewish worker serves the champagne, the artist gives an outstanding show, and the wives are waiting for their last night together. The champagne is running out, the patriots are dancing, the women are impatient, then an index card appears, later a syringe that will change some peoples’ lives forever…

“Dievoushka is one of the most exciting pieces of musical theatre that I have come across so far. The musical quotations and operetta excerpts fit well with the motifs of Puccini or Wagner operas and the Hungarian military marches and revisionist songs, while the content is the center, the music is subordinated to the text. And its content is as unique and original as its form. It takes place in the early 1940s, some of the annexed territories have been returned to Hungary, which can be felt in a kind of intoxication, but at the same time, the development of the war and the fear of going into the unknown have a depressing effect. In addition, the personal destinies and relationships are extremely exciting, the story is full of humorous contradictions, so this masterpiece of Béla Pintér is very dense, complex, layered, sometimes almost surreal. I think the lyrics and the music are so strong that it would almost be enough to read them and sing them while sitting on chairs. I’m confident that we won’t spoil it during the staging,” said director Máté Hegymegi about the performance.

The collaborators in the making of the performance are:

Júlia Balázs (dramaturge), Anna Kupás (set designer), Kata Pető (costume designer), Kristóf Urbán (music director), Sándor Baumgartner (light designer), Noémi Becsey-Imreh (assistant director), Edit Veres Bartha (stage manager) and Dobra Mária Magdolna (prompter).

Cast: József Kolcsár, Bence Kónya-Ütő, Tibor Pálffy, Zsuzsa Gajzágó, Janka Korodi, Hajnalka Szalma, Szabolcs Varsányi, Gábor Erdei, Zsuzsanna Vass, László Mátray, Mária Fekete and Kati Kovács.