A Hungarian Comedy a Great Success in England’s Theaters

Hungary Today 2023.11.02.

Over the past two decades, Zsolt Pozsgai’s comedy Liselotte in May has been staged in twelve languages in Europe and the Americas. On November 1, it will be performed at the Capstone Theater in Liverpool, starring Rita Sigmond and Alex Gatstramb. The show has previously been performed in London and has been featured at several theater festivals, writes Magyar Nemzet.

The Liszt Institute’s Hungarian Cultural Center in London and the Consulate General of Hungary in Manchester have played a major role in the London and Liverpool productions,

aiming to engage with the country’s audiences through a performance in line with local cultural codes.

Zsolt Pozsgai. Photo via Wikipedia

Fact

Zsolt Pozsgai (1960-) is a Hungarian freelance writer, playwright, stage and film director, and film producer. He became a writer in his early teenage years, and at the age of 14 he was already directing at an independent amateur theater company in Pécs (southern Hungary), where he completed his secondary education. Pozsgai compiled his first featured theatrical play, Horatio, during the years of his military service. In 1992, he was appointed as chief artistic director of the Arizona Theater, where his musical The Kid debuted with great success. After that, new dramas and new premiers followed one by one at theaters both in Budapest and in the countryside. In 1995, he directed a drama titled Arthur and Paul at the Madách Theater in Budapest. In 1996, this piece of art won the Europe Theater Prize in Berlin that is given to the best new European drama. Between 1987 and 2018, Hungary performed as many as 94 of his plays, many of which were put on numerous times. These include dramas, tragicomedy, fairy tale plays, scripts of musicals, comedies, and low comedies.

As the summary of Liselotte in May states:

it is a bittersweet absurdist comedy about a gentle, lonely heart – the story of a doomed woman in her thirties, desperate to find love. The sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic production takes audiences on an emotional rollercoaster through the life of a woman longing for love.

The play has toured theaters at home and abroad, and is currently performed regularly in Romanian by five theaters in Romania, as well as in Bulgaria, Peru, and Northern Macedonia.

Liselotte in May is the author’s most performed play abroad; it has been translated into English, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Romanian, French, Norwegian, Serbian, Croatian, and Hindi. Between 1999 and 2015, it was premiered twenty-two times all over the world from Sofia, Bulgaria to New York City, and from Geneva, Switzerland to Vancouver, Canada.

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Via Magyar Nemzet, Featured image via Facebook/Liselotte in May