Christopher Moore. Moore is the author of Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, perhaps the funniest book I have ever read. It explains those age old mysteries such as why Jewish people, myself included, go for Chinese food at Christmas. When I saw by chance that a Hungarian theater was putting on a play of this book, I just had to get tickets. The play was performed by the Fuge or Spirit Tarsulat at the Fogadas in the Millenaris Park. Way up in the top of the building, It is not really set up as a theater. People suffered from lack of view since a good amount of the action happened on the sitting or lying on the floor. While gathered 

at the stage entrance, we were addressed from on high by the angel Raziel welcoming us and showing us to our seats. The script writer intentially tried to make us feel uncomfortable on several occasions by having the actors attempting to interact with the audience, but the audience not knowing if they should respond of not. This created many uncomfortable silences for no apparent reason. It was not like we were asked deep questions of religion or philosophy and felt off balance, which would have been more understandable. But then, this is my only complaint about the evening. Perhaps they wanted to use empty time like in 2001 Space Odyssey was used to invoke a sense of space? Biff often told his gospel as if a standup comic, while Raziel was infatuated by TV and Spiderman. Viktor Szabo was a surprise package as the unmasked yeti, with his powerfully given monologue after many small intentionally bumbling parts leading up to this. His wink at one of the audience members when going back for a second hug (first as a yeti) brought the house down. The entire cast was very good, but special mention must go to Gabor Jaszberenyi (looks a bit like 007 Daniel Craig) who played Biff. Gabor Szeplaki's Raziel was also well done and quite humorous. During the first act, Biff ordered a pizza with horse sausage (of course not pork) as his first meal in 2000 years. It was delivered 15 minutes later to the stage where the entire cast sat down to feast while a recording of their dialogue was broadcast while the rest of us drooled. With a 6pm start, I doubt many of us had dinner before.

So pizza was much on our minds as we left the theater and I remembered the Marxim Pizzaria on Kis Rokus u. I had not been there in almost 20 years. The place itself has not changed, but the area and circumstances certainly have. My first time there was with my friend Balazs. There were no street lights, the Ganz factory was still half-heartedly operating (now Millenaris Park) surrrounded by steam, broken windows, and a sense of the thriller a la Le Carre or Deighton, and a flickering communist star far down the dark street. So soon after the changes, I had no idea what to expect, and thought the police might come any minute to close the place down and arrest us. Seriously. But it was all tongue in cheek. The decore is pure communist, peace doves in cages, Lenin posters, barbed wire, Soviet uniforms...and the menu also reflects the theme with Gagarin, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Red Commisar pizzas. The pizzas were reasonable at good priced at 750-900 huf for 23cm, and a pint of Dreher for 430.The second and last time I was in was in the early 1990s with Scottish-Irish friends Suzie and Jas one Christmas. On the way to the toilet, Jas for some reason swiped a tourist's camera off the table and took it to the toilet with him. He snapped a few photos of himself at the urinal and clandestinely replaced the camera on the way back to our table. God knows what the people thought when they developed their photos (yes, it was that long ago - film developers, max 36 pictures...). 

Cast:

Józsua: Bori Tamás
Lévi (Biff): Jászberényi Gábor
Raziel: Széplaky Gábor
Gáspár, Menyhért, Boldizsár, János: Perjés János
Jeti: Szabó Viktor
Mária hangja: Siménfalvy Ágota Dramaturg: Perczel Enikő
Színpadra alkalmazta: Makranczi Zalán Zene: Bori Tamás