Chickenhead

It is a tragedy, set among low-lifes on the outskirts of Budapest. Dramatic Exchange describes it as "Widely considered to be the most important Hungarian play of the last 20 years". The odd title of the play refers in the first instance to the chicken heads that an old woman feeds to her cat. However, it can also be taken to refer more broadly to the obtuse behaviour of the main characters in the play. The play is an odd mixture of pathos and nihilism, written against the bleak background of Stalinist totalitarianism from which Hungary was...

The Insult

Szása on his day off mends the old automobile of a young couple and goes shopping with his son. In the shop the saleswoman mistakes him to be a drunken customer of the other day and begins to offend him. Szása, for the sake of his son on the first place, wants to clear the misunderstanding up. At the end he is beaten up and humiliated.