The Song of the Fool
	Dezső Dobay, the director of R.S.9. Theater’s “The Song of the Fool” performance produced an artistic self-confession-like performance on a high standard.
	Gábor Zsigovics Zsöllye 05/2001
	The Waste Land
	What kind of a revue is this? Well, a special one. One that fits the stage, and especially the atmosphere -as well as the serious message- of the theater. The sanctity of life and the unavoidable nature of death... Thousands of vivid, hectic and exciting, riveting, gripping and imaginative events. Songs, poems, music - with unexpected turns. Well-elaborated and precisely performed chains of movements and dances. A tight and tough teamwork. Actors and artists: András Miklós, Emília Frankó, Csaba Hegedűs, László Kassai, Krisztina Kovács, Róbert Orosz, Tamás Soós, Dóra Veres. Music: Csaba Vedres, set and costume (colorful, appropriate, expressive): Dóra Veres, choreography: Margit Balogh
	Katalin Györgypál Kláris 03/2002
	Ödön von Horváth : Kasimir and Karoline
	The productions of the RS9 Theatre have never been disappointing, but I consider this premiere outstanding. Knowing not only all the works of Ödön von Horváth but also the essence of his personality, director Dezső Dobay sensitively staged this unusual play that is so typical of the author's world.
	Mária Marton Magyarország 25/09/1997
	Ödön von Horváth's play, Kasimir and Karoline (1932) is the flash of teeth of the world between the two world wars staggering on the edge of the deep social gulf. Watching the play is like watching a movie in a way. As one scene is over, darkness falls and it fades into the next one. The elaboration of the scenes is inventive, and their realisation is original.
	András Váczy Képes Európa 08/10/1997.
	Director Dezső Dobay builds and composes his productions on the contrast between the age and the private individual. The contrast provided by the author -the overwhelming happiness of the beer festival- is periodically interrupted by an inconceivable sense of threat, the freezing breath of the approaching danger. There is a strong contradiction between Dobay's conception, the spectacular scenes, Dóra Veres' scenery and costumes, Csaba Vedres' music and the style, nature and mainly the quality of the acting.
	Katalin Metz Új Magyarország 15/09/1997
	Director of the play, Dezső Dobay has been operating an elaborated, highly stylized but also an extremely expressive stage mechanism in his works. He brings Horváth's subtle, sorrow yet graceful grotesque to the front and darkens it into cruel absurd. He keeps changing the masques of a death carnival on the life ruins of Munich. In his two swinging doll characters, Dobay sends the judgement to the sky. The end? The beginning? The creepy creaking device breaks the silence of God that drizzles on us continuously.
	Tamás Mihalicza Voilá, November 1997
	Shloyme Ansky : Dybuk
	Dybuk is one of the most beautiful love stories in word's literature. This drama is not only the poetical elaboration of the Romeo and Juliet story, but also an ethnographically exact and valuable document of Jewish beliefs, ceremonies and traditions. The performance offers many beautiful solutions and bewildering moments. The tension of the wedding, the Kaddish for Nissan's soul, the Messulah's breathtaking monologue at the end of the play are all memorable scenes well supported by Jack (Yankl) Frank's music and the ancient melodies.
	Adrienne Darvay Nagy Criticai Lapok, May 1997
	Choderlos de Laclos : Dangerous Liaisons
	The stage adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' epistle novel is a coquettishly daring attempt from the RS9 Theatre. István Guba's vicomte can only rarely respond to Dóra Veres's finely elaborated marquise. The small stage, few moves, László Melis' musical bridges and light show with Dóra Veres' white costumes (frivolous opposites of the evil's darkness) and scenery of boxes provide a good base for Dezső Dobay's direction.
	András Váczi Képes Európa 17/04/1996
	The creative company of RS9 Theatre had a totally different approach to the story. The performance has two faces. Just like in the movie, the characters of Madame Tourvel (Ildikó Németh), Madame Volanges (Emília Frankó) and Chevalier Danceny (László Kassai) are in line with the romantic and pathetic atmosphere of the story. Vicomte Valmont -in the film played by John Malkovich- is portrayed from a completely different angle thanks to István Guba. He becomes a grotesque, ironic character, a Don Juan like once Svejk might have been. The same applies to the role of Cecile, created by Virág Szemerédy. In spite of the asymmetric direction of Dezső Dobay, there is a lot of humour and beauty in the play.
	András Szabó Esti Hírlap 03/04/1996.
	Péter Esterházy - Ferenc Darvas : Daisy
	...I think Daisy is about freedom. However, age ran after Daisy and caught her right before the turn of the millennium. Because nowadays, let's think about it, when everyone has a confident plan for blooming, how authentic a reflective voice can be, saying that if you do not feel lost, you will be lost.
	Tamás Koltai Élet és Irodalom 29/09/1995
	I will not give away any grand novelty with saying that Daisy is an especially fantastic play; but supplementing it with Darvas' excellent music and the piquant view in Dezső Dobay's direction along with the actors' authentic performance, it becomes an experience you should not miss. It is refreshing, profound, spectacular, scandalous, loud. I think you'll love it.
	András Szabó Esti Hírlap 11/09/1995
	Dobay's Daisy is not set in a dive but on the terrain of the haggard male-female body torn to pieces and stripped to the genitals. In Esterházy's Daisy the pub location, the den was also heading for symbolism and fiction.
	Tamás Tarján Színház December 1995
	To me this performance is also primarily and heart-grippingly about the contingency of gender roles. In certain moments - especially thanks to István Guba's impersonation of Robi- it asks dead seriously the questions of life otherwise ironically posed by the narrator, namely "how much it is to live" and "who we really are".
	Erika Csontos Criticai Lapok October 1995
	I love Esterházy's works, but I am less enthusiastic about his short novel Daisy. However, I really liked the version R.S.9. made of it. At last I understood the text, the situation, I enjoyed the humour and irony of the Master. This is due to a great extent to the playful, caricature-like funny pseudo-opera music of Ferenc Darvas, the director (Dezső Dobay), the stage designer (Zsolt Khell) and the actors, especially to Péter Vallai.
	Péter Horváth Élet és Irodalom 08/03/1996
	The company of R.S.9. Theatre will also be present at the Bialystok Festival starting on 20th March this year. The group will give a guest performance of the play Daisy by Péter Esterházy and Ferenc Darvas, and debut with it in Warsaw as well. Daisy, directed by Dezső Dobay is over its fiftieth performance in Budapest
	MTI Magyar Hírlap 17/02/1998
	Péter Nádas: Funeral
	Hajnal Túri and Zsolt Huszár came out with a quite measured and absolutely acceptable, substantial production. They approach their stage-self as actors of the R.S.9. Theatre happen to be performing at that particular time. "Complicated" Dobay knows how to cut such a Gordian knot, and though he snips it through, the knot stays there and the drama becomes more understandable yet not simpler. Hajnal Túri and Zsolt Huszár present the drama of place seeking, hopelessness, mutual, intensive incomprehension and (lack of) love in a human child's role.
	Tamás Tarján Színház October 1994
	Witold Gombrowicz : Operetta
	In preparation for the Gombrowicz Festival in Poland, naturally they perform Operetta once again. The braveness, the seriousness of the interpretation, the organic unity of music, sound and movement, the emphasis on operetta as a form were accompanied by the relieved nature of the play. Albertinka wakes up in a torn dress as the victim of violence after the messed up revolution. She is not the symbol of eternal youth any more but that of the dishonoured human nakedness. That is the authentic reading today.
	Katalin Budai Criticai Lapok July-August 1993
	It is a rarity to see such a theatrical devotion, so much work and humble blazing. The eye is the spirit of the performance. The look in the young people's eyes next to the Otto Wagner-designed secessionist synagogue is dedicated. They believe that they have a mission. They eyes are shining. They enjoy themselves. And they have their own, intellectual audience.
	M.G.P. Népszabadság
Between the 2nd and 6th June the first international Gombrowicz festival was held in Radom (Poland), at the birthplace of Gombrowicz. Beside the productions of domestic theatres, the audience could also enjoy three French and two German performances at the renowned event. However, the biggest hit among all was the play Operetta by the R.S.9. Theatre from Budapest.
Géza Fülöp, Warshaw Esti Hírlap 16/06/1993
The Operetta performance of the R.S.9. Theatre was undoubtedly the biggest sensation of the festival. "An astonishingly different Gombrowicz" - summed up Janusz Majcherek his appreciative impressions of the Hungarian guest production in Teatr. In his opinion, the R.S.9.'s performance provides a relative moral for the Polish theatrical community, after which you can not read the play the same way any more. "This is the most fascinating and organic Operetta interpretation that I have ever seen. An aggressive and desperate Operetta about the lost illusions of Central and Eastern Europe..." According to the critic of the Tytul, the directors staged Operetta in a compressed way, setting a tempestuous pace while the grotesque way of playing was turned into a Chaplin-style burlesque. The critic of Gazeta Wyborcza also liked the Hungarian Operetta the most, because "what is happening on the stage provides an incredibly dense and powerful picture of the complicated mixture of triviality and threat Gombrowicz saw in the history of our century." The reviewer of Polityka devoted all his attention to the most controversial aspect of the production; to the fact that in this performance the glorious resurrection of the naked Albertinka is missed out and a deflowered, humiliated girl steps out of the stage coffin instead. The Hungarians therefore "decided to be unfaithful to the author rather than to play the final liberation without finding emotional reference to it either in their own feelings or in their experience of the world."
András Pályi Színház August 1994
Desire to Become Indians
The 47th art festival in Edinburgh was held between 15th August and 4th September. Beside the celebrity-packed international festival there is the professionally acclaimed Fringe Festival with the aim of presenting new ambitions and alternative companies. This year 571 troupes and groups came to the festival. Hungary was represented by the dance theatre production of Yvette Bozsik and the R.S.9. Studio Theatre’s performance titled Desire to Become Indians. The play, based mainly on Franz Kaffka’s novel America was played in English with a huge success. In this case the foreign accent is not disturbing at all, since the story is about immigrants. The play was performed twelve times in Edinburgh and afterwards in Bath as well.
Esti Hírlap 17/09/1993
Michael Griggs, director of the Portland International Performance Festival (USA) saw the R.S.9. Theatre performing Dezső Dobay’s and Katalin Lábán’s adaptation and direction in English at the Edinburgh Festival and immediately invited the company to this year’s event. The success was unanimous as the professional audience especially appreciated the cathartic experience of the finale that practically shocked them. The company spent three weeks in the United States.
Katalin Metz Új Magyarország, 22/08/1994
Samuel Beckett
Tamás Tarján recommends the performance with the following words: "Dezső Dobay (the director) framed everything into squares with wounding peaks. Window, door, plank-bed, mirror, spot of light, tape recorder: nothing escapes the cage of the quadrangle. It seems as if even the Man curled up into this shape on his stool. Whether or not he leaves his watch post, he listens to the tape recorder's mystic, incontestable message, cruises around with pantomime or puppet-like movements, sometimes clownishly in the room that does not even respond with the morse code of emptiness.
Élet és Irodalom 09/10/1992
Karl Kraus : Last Days
Along the Polish plays of its repertoire, especially Operetta, R.S.9. Theatre took up the absurd “cabaretta” with this performance. Director Dezső Dobay narrates the fall from elegance to filth in an excellent manner. What is topical in this brutally delicate total-comedy? It is the precisely elaborated, music-organised cabaret that defies the Hungarian cabaret traditions and follows only the finest ones. Béla Faragó and László Melis played the music in the never existing - still standing nightclub “To the Carpathians” that should rather be called ‘To the Balkans”.
Tamás Tarján Népszabadság 07/04/1992
Last Days: the serious title and the genre (musical tragedy) can easily deceive the uninformed viewer, although the unsuspecting incomers will definitely laugh through the next one and a half hours. The last scene is set in a dissolute house party at the end of the world. “Jesus Christ, how great it feels, Viennese blood runs in our veins” - and they dance faster and faster, till they drop.
Erika Csontos Magyar Narancs 29/04/1992
Due to Dezső Dobay’s direction, in spite of the mixed company the show is not a receptive theatrical production but an R.S.9. performance, leaving its mark not only the on hosts but most definitely on the guests as well.
Katalin Szűcs Színház June 1992
Stanislaw Wyspianski : The Wedding
Stanislaw Wyspianski's play titled The Wedding is not merely a mockery of Polish Messianism, but also a national self-examination with a tragic overtone. The direction of Katalin Lábán and Dezső Dobay was aimed at invoking the atmosphere of a medieval danse macabre. The wedding dance is identified with old gruesome processions reminding us of the unmerciful passing and the hope for victory on the destruction at the same time. The group surprises us with an attractively mature performance. The roles are well elaborated, the moves are authentic and the use of space is almost impeccable. This is due to the thorough workshop labour and elaboration, turning our attention towards the studio theatre as one of the possibilities for rescuing the theatrical culture.
László Fábián
Directors Katalin Lábán and Dezső Dobay managed to compress this profoundly Polish play for the Hungarian stage in such an exquisite way that the Polish danse macabre leading to destruction speaks to us as a general Hungarian and Central - Eastern European memento. What is more, it is more and more topical every day...
Anna Pór Táncművészet September 1990
R.S.9. endeavours to illustrate a state of existence, to depict a word spirit; the situation when the individual could not be shown, because it is already gone and absorbed. On the one hand it is denuded vegetation, on the other it is a mass of consumers living in their objects or a puppet dressed in patterns and prefabricated panels.
Katalin Budai Film Színház Muzsika, September 1991
One of the most important European theatrical forums, the Edinburgh Festival in England is celebrating its twenty-fifth birthday this year. The company of R.S.9. Studio Theatre (Budapest) was invited for the first time to this prestigious festival. The group will perform Gombrowicz's Operetta and Wyspianski's The Wedding five times between the 26th and 31st. The play Operetta was chosen from the theatre's repertoire by the organisers of the festival during their visit to Budapest in January. In May, one of the BBC's crews came to Hungary to shoot parts from the production in advance. This programme was shown on BBC2 last week. Along with the television crew, the delegation of the festival went to see the studio theatre once more. This time they saw and invited their other repertoire play, The Wedding, of which a television trailer was also shot.
Gábor Nógrádi
Beckett synopsis
We respect, follow and refer to Samuel Beckett. But we rarely play his works nowadays. Outmoded? Difficult? Or are we too busy with other things to concentrate on him? Are there too many facts, as Rilke states, veiling the reality presented by Beckett? The Ghost Trio (1975) staged by Dezső Dobay, the equally excellent translator, is exquisite. Accurate, disciplined, ruthless and beautiful. This evening should be obligatory not only for those preparing for their high-school graduation but also for those who love mature and to-the-point theatre.
Katalin Budai Kritika 91/4
„Are you completely alone?" "Those who are alone are completely alone." These two sentences that mutually presume each other are the formula and the score of the three Samuel Beckett texts (Theatre I., 1956; Radio I., 1961; Ghost Trio, 1975) staged in the R.S.9. Theatre for the Hungarian premiere. The director composed the shades of greyness and hopelessness of cell life into a perfect "light-poem". Gyula Szabó taught the spotlights to keep silent and to scream. Dezső Dobay framed everything into squares with wounding peaks. Window, door, plank-bed, mirror, spot of light, tape recorder: nothing escapes the cage of the quadrangle.
Tamás Tarján Színház March 1991
Witold Gombrowicz : Operetta
Now and here -and not only here- the play of Gombrowicz is more topical than ever. The performance can also be interpreted as a kind of danse macabre. Recently it has been a common theatrical trick to give a play an actualised political meaning by selected costumes, statues, flags or music in order to spoon-feed the mentally challenged audience what the play is about. Luckily, the two directors Dezső Dobay and Katalin Lábán did not do us this favour, so the performance could most definitely last a couple of parliamentary periods.
László N. Göbölyös OKÉ 14/06/1990
Jan Nowiczki has already starred in a great number of Polish and many Hungarian movies but last week he debuted in an unusual role in Budapest when he took the chair of the jury of the Festival of the Polish Theatrical Works. “I heard that you liked many of the performances.” “Yes, especially that of the R.S.9. group. Their production is one of the best performances I have ever seen in Hungarian theatres.”
Tamás Karizs Mai Nap
R.S.9. Theatre has just returned from Edinburgh where they participated at an international festival. The alternative theatrical group was invited by director Richard Demarco who presented the 18-member company in the gallery and theatre named after himself at the Fringe Festival. There was a great attendance at the debut of R.S.9. The company played Wyspianski’s The Wedding and Gombrowitcz’s Operetta six times with huge success.
S. Beckett: Catastrophe, Quad, What Where?
Three shorter plays by the author were performed jointly by Szkéné Theater and the Contemporary Forum of Art. Silence is different at Szkéné. Characters move with tight, precisely calculated moves as if obeying an invisible force. Their gestures and words are all symbols stretched a far as possible, metaphors of defencelessness, power, servility and incomprehension. The creative company at Szkéné realized existence in such an abstract degree that goes beyond the measure ordered by absurd. Therefore, for today’s Hungarian theatrical audience -used to more direct and understandable interpretations- their art is not fully acceptable.
Kritika 1987
August Strindberg: A Dream Play
As we enjoy the performance of Szkéné’s young artists, we think about how naturally the idea and emotion of Strindberg talks to us, how familiar it is to the actors and to us what the writer created. That is when we realize: Strindberg is more than an epoch-making author advancing modern experiences. It is fortunate that he did not leave us, he came with us - he is here on the stage of Szkéné. This surprising and pleasant encounter is due to the two directors, Katalin Lábán and Dezső Dobay. Life is full of aggression and pain - dreams reflect all that, unfortunately sometimes in a more painful form than reality. This image is both touching and ironic. Strindberg is not thrillingly tragic, there is lightness in his art, what is more, he even has a sense of humor. This recently seen performance, the direction, the musical composition of László Melis’ old hits, László Rókás’ excellent and well-formed choreography all strengthen this feeling in us. The actors, together as well as individually, delivered a detailed and passionate performance.
Julia Szekrényesy Élet és Irodalom 1986
Dostoyevsky: Mouse Hole
The production titled the Mouse Hole is based on an adaptation and montage of Dostoyevsky’s short stories. It is basically three parallel monologues held together by one woman. Due to the uneven nature of the actors’ performance the play is realized only in fragments. (With acting clichés György Bosze creates only the outlines of his character, while János Bata -chained to a chair- reduces his means of expression to mere text-delivery and is not a strong enough counterpoint. Academy undergraduate Gabriella Segesvári as the woman playing key roles in different men’s lives -in a basically unwritten part- could not -and could not have been able to- build up a whole life from fragments.) The performance is still suggestive, and that is mainly due to Peter Vallai. Vallai plays the clerk from “Notes from a Mouse Hole” portraying the process of a man’s total mental decline. Vallai had to fight the memory of one of the most excellent adaptations of the Hungarian Television; in the film directed by György Fehér, Péter Haumann played the main role. Vallai was building in sections. The life of the character still became complete and continuous. Vallai did not dawdle or mumble, he did not portray the mental state and decline of the character through its external appearance but displayed the stages of the character’s self-analysis in a precise and powerful manner.
István Nánay Színház 1985
Karl Kraus: Last Days
The team -that introduced itself with the musical tragedy “Last Days” on the Szkéné stage of the Technical University- was organized in the spirit of unified stylistic commitment. They speak the same artistic language in a comfortably harmonized manner - the one that proved to be the most effective in portraying grotesque in recent times. The show was based on Karl Kraus work, titled “The Last Days of Mankind”. The orientation is excitingly daring. Kraus is not a cabaret-writer gagman, and the thousands of pages of dialogues are not a natural choice for stage adaptation. In the huge flood of scenes and words depicting with epic ambitions the K.uK. world and the collapse of the black and yellow waxworks in World War I, it was the possibility of a dramatic edition that needed a sharp eye to find. The Brecht-like songs and military tunes highlight the sparkling thoughts of the performance.
Róbert Dévényi Film, Színház, Muzsika 1984/18
Samuel Beckett: Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu
The Stage of the Technological University played the two new works of Samuel Beckett in the own production of Szkéné a couple of times. The Hungarian premier of Ohio Impromptu and Rockaby featured two artists from Szolnok, Péter Vallai and Katalin Takács and also József Nagy. Although it is possible that it is through the artistic element that some people find a way to understand and accept the message, it is more likely that the “Beckett-audience” is a cast with a definite attitude, existing independently from Beckett. One thing is sure: this type of audience is part of an audience-minority. And Samuel Beckett is a minority-writer. But for this minority, Szkéné’s performance is a feast. Because here it turns out that within the absolute boundaries of Beckett what an unlimited relative freedom producers enjoy. Along with Dezső Dobay’s sensitively melodic text, spotlight in the right of Zsolt Khell’s black box stage tears out from the darkness the fixed-size table of Ohio Impromptu with the actors precisely placed on the shorter and longer sides; and also the character’s head and figure in a rocking-chair from Rockaby, just as Beckett described.
Judit Szántó Színház 1983
Ohio Impromptu and Rockaby, the Hungarian Beckett premiers of the Technological University’s Szkéné Stage -a part of the season’s best- are the living proof that the theatrical language of absurd drama can not only be learned but also be spoken at a native level.
Tamás Koltai Nagyvilág 1983