I find Shakespeare in English difficult at the best of times. When I saw Richard III at the National Theater last year
I had the foresight to re-read a summary of the play first, but not this time. Jeeez, it has been almost 30 years since I had to read the play in high school. This bi-lingual version, Sweet Flesh/Édes Hús manipulates and combines
“beautiful fragments of Shakespeare's tragedy, and evokes Juliet as an eternal memory, as a waking dream. She
re-lives those sweet, dense and dark six days that brought her passion and desperation, grief and joy and her
untimely death.” Julia Ubrankovics, who recently received the prize for best actress at the 40th Hungarian Film Week, <!-- pagebreak -->together with Sophie Thompson from London “take you through this rite of passage into womanhood with rituals and medieval singing. This theatre-séance conjures up Shakespeare's most beautiful ghost: Juliet.”Although I was constantly baffled (I am still trying to figure out if one or both were Juliet, Romeo, and in what combination) about what was going on because of the Hungarian translation not matching the English, forgetting the details of the original play, and having to switch between both languages in my head at a rapid pace (not to mention the actresses at one point speaking both languages backwards!), the acting, choreography, and costume design were excellent. Ubrankovics must have put on 100 different convincing faces in just 1.5 hours. The choreography was particularly important because it is in this way that they dealt with the bi-lingual performance. For me, the most powerful moment of the play was when the two actresses were striking themselves insisting that they would not marry Paris. The singing was also very nice. If you want to see some great acting there is one preformance left, tonight at 8pm at Sirály, 1061 Budapest, Király utca 50. Tickets 1500Ft  Please write to book some to Réka at: varosiszinhaz@gmail.com.