#Bereczki Zoltan

[theghostparty]

Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour - Redesign

This redesign is nowhere near finished (currently inking a Le Bal as we speak), but just wanted to drop a preview of what is to come.

...I said it was maximalist and bonkers, didn't I?

...did I also mention that everyone casted is being pulled from a different iteration of the musical?

[spizgany-lipejs]

For some it might be just a red t-shirt but for me this is peak 00s european gay club fashion and you can't take it away from me.

[fulesthefirst]

Confession time - I actually don't like any part in Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour that is about Roméo and Juliette.

After Mercutio's death, I'm out.

[aliesafenlock]

For the lovely @neednottoneed, with thanks for all the work they have done for our European musical fandom. Nagyon szépen köszönöm!

Images from Budapesti Operettszínház's 2002 production of Cabaret, starring Szilveszter Szabó as the Emcee, Edit Balázsovits as Sally Bowles, and Zoltán Bereczki as Cliff Bradshaw.

This was a fantastic production with lots of queer overtones, directed by openly-gay Hungarian theatre legend Róbert Alföldi. Having seen both in person, I found it comparable to the concurrently running Broadway production at the Roundabout Theatre.

English text of the advertising flyer pictured at the top and bottom:

"The setting is 1930, in Germany. (It is three years before Hitler assumed power: at this point, the Führer-to-be has used resounding National Socialist slogans, written Mein Kampf as a Bible for his movement, and organized the SA, his party's paramilitary force.) The people of Berlin have been asleep since the Treaty of Versailles or barely beginning to stir at dawn. Based on 'isolated incidents,' Berliners are starting to sense that something is happening: why are these National Socialists so wild? After all, their slogans are so promising and attractive. Why isn't Herr Schultz, a small-business owner, considered German if he is Jewish? At the moment the answer is a shrug: these lads are still young; if they are a bit rough around the edges, life will straighten them out. Only Cliff, a young American writer notices - perhaps because as an outsider and the son of a nation woven of immigrants, he is more difficult to fanatize - that, poetically speaking, the sleeping Venus has conceived and is about to give birth to a monster. The unique merit of 'Cabaret', reaching well beyond its own meaning - and possibly the reason for its worldwide success - is that it presents this monster as a cub. Like all young animals, this cub snaps occasionally, but that's only natural - it is merely sharpening its teeth."

@cooter-n-tooter the Hungarian Cabaret production!

[miraculous-cumberbitch]

so glad that we as a society (hungarians) are talking about this again (this has been very well known in hungarian pop culture and everyone talks about it)

i feel so terribly sorry for everyone who has never seen/doesnt even know about the iconic wonder that is rómeó és júlia musical 2005 starring dolhai attila and szinetár dóra and bereczki zoltán and szabó p szilveszter 💔

[mmetacarpals]

every once in a while I glance over and see the small cut out of bereczki zoltan as mercutio I have had taped to my wall since freshman year of high school and I. feel great big things

[bencutiostan]

Please retj Fandom look at this Zolicutio art I made please guys I'm back

[budapast]

typewriters calculators service

[doomednarrative]

Every now and then I am reminded of how hard the Hungarian musical version of Romeo and Juliet slaps and I have to take a moment to appreciate specifically Mercutio from that performance.

[theghostparty]

Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour - Redesign - 2024

If you missed part one with Roméo and Juliette, click here. Once again, long design explanation.

When designing Mercutio specifically, I turned very explicitly inwards in my belief that Mercutio is not a Montague and should not be tied to the Montagues solely. Furthermore, Mercutio has FAMILY--he's the Prince's cousin and if we want to get really semantic about it, he also has a brother, Valentine.

All this being said, in designing Mercutio, I needed to tie him to Le Prince (Escalus) and I did that mostly in dictating that these are the characters who are allowed to wear black, mostly black leather. It's a distinction that goes mostly unnoticed until its pointed out, but no other designs incorporate deep black tones. There's also this strong, olive green tone that borrows from the Montague palette and gold hardware that borrows from the Capulet palette. The Prince's family gets to straddle the line between both worlds.

I thought very texturally for the Montagues and Capulets, so in trying to give the Prince's family something distinct, I landed on this brushstroke texture to give all the leather and denim pieces a custom feeling.

In his Les Rois du Monde look (his base look--I imagine this explicitly directorial choice to have him and the Prince enter together at the top of Vérone and have Mercutio break away to join the Montagues), there is hints of this painterly texture in blue as opposed to the gold of the Prince. I wanted to feel like every alignment Mercutio has with the Montague family is an active choice on his part. I imagine him painted those swaths of blue himself. His trousers are a bleached faded, torn denim.

We see the true royal gold in Le Bal, like, I think it's just funny to think Mercutio already owned these trousers and said "Fuck it" and wore them to dress up in. His look is explicitly jester themed. It's a little bit "Earring Magic Ken Doll" coded, which delights me to no end.

This is also a good place to point out how fixated I became on closure methods in garments. In Roméo's initial design, there is a strong focus on zippers, Le Prince's jacket is held together with gold hook and eye tape at all the seams, and with Mercutio it's all about lacing.

Part of this is in reference to the explicitly gendered ideas around corsetry and playing with that in tandem with Mercutio's generally accepted queer readings. It's also an interesting metaphor to think about being bound--by duty, by honour, by friendship, by tradition--something that Mercutio is so explicitly caught in between in the Montague-Capulet feud.

His final look during Le Duel, is a take on a Jean Paul Gautier design, and is the most partisan look for Mercutio. Doffing his jacket exposes this soft satin and coutil corset top in the faintest hint of blue. A soft underbelly of allegiance that would take to stage blood SO well (and would make who ever was dressing and laundering this show absolutely hate me as a designer, but I digress).

I also think it makes him a nice mirror to Tybalt, who's overarching design element is gold chains.

Tybalt's design is wholly referential to Mark Seibert's Tybalt. Is it because I can never get that little gold and red cropped jacket out of my brain? Perhaps. But I also like to think that design for Tybalt acts as a reflection of Mercutio. The inherent softness assigned to the Capulet family's design (silks, velvets, chiffons) plays really nicely with how much machismo is implied in Tybalt's characterization.

During Vérone, we see him in a half doublet, likely of a low-pile velvet, a satin faced silk period shirt open in an absolutely impractical way, and a floral print denim trouser. I also gave him a little cuban-heeled boot. For fashion.

Tybalt is a good place to also point out that weapons are very intentionally placed in and out of scenes. Mercutio always has a dagger. Roméo leaves his behind during Aimer. Benvolio does not carry one. Tybalt has an ornately sheathed sword. There is this undercurrent of violence for these characters that is dressed up and dressed down, but persists.

In Le Bal, I really leant into the idea of chainmail for this character, in keeping with the concept of chivalry and Arthurian influences. There's a little bit of royal purple thrown in there for good measure as well as a jaw-bone mask that, at best, is foreshadowing and, at its shallowest, looks cool as hell.

During Le Duel, I wanted to strip our fighters down to exposed skin. A lot of this is to do with one of my favourite versions of this scene, Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet. What I love about the sequence is how it devolves from nobel duel to outright brawl--from a distance to something very close and personal. It's the type of step by step tension-building that I really enjoy: where there are moments (when they're just shouting words back at forth, when they're drawing their weapons, when Mercutio would doff his jacket, when Tybalt doffs his doublet) when the fight could have de-escalated. When they could have walked away. But of course, it's not the play if they do.

I just imagine seeing Mark Seibert and Bereczki Zoltán fight would be fun, ultimately.

And now onto Benvolio. I fixated on paring down his looks, and quite frankly, if it weren't for how much I enjoy his little twink clubbing outfit, I would have probably only given him one costume. My justification for this is that Benvolio gets to live. Ostensibly, he has a lifetime past this play of changing to do. I feel very strongly about the idea of Benvolio as a narrator, Benvolio as a passive presence that is forced to become active. He's not certain in the same way that Roméo and Mercutio are about love and hate. He literally spends a whole song stagnating and waffling on how the hell he's going to tell his cousin that his wife is dead. He runs around following their impulses, patching over their problems. I have a lot of feelings about Benvolio as a character.

He's really the softest of the Montague characters in textures: his doublet is torn and slashed denim, his shirt is some sort of billowy linen blend. He has a little bit of metal flair in the form of this thigh adornment, but really he's quite simple--and my comparison to Roméo and Mercutio, he's quite warm. That hint of magenta on Roméo is a full on feature on Benvolio.

I accept any and all slander about my choices for his Le bal look, but by god do I think it's silly and it brings me joy. Suit of armour under ripped green denim, a little navy ribbed singlet with a silver chainmail crop top over it? Lensless silver glasses frames? It makes no real sense, but I stand by my "We're sneaking into the Capulet's ball tonight with very short notice, here's what we can cobble together" reasoning.

[spizgany-lipejs]

240223 Bereczki Zoltán - Lehetsz Király

[fulesthefirst]

Romeo et Juliette - Musical

I’m pretty sure I’m very late to this but! I only just realised European musicals have fandoms on tumblr. AND that some people are just as obsessed with the Hungarian version of R&J as Hungarians soooo I collected my favourite comments from youtube...enjoy!

(Also, it is WILD how Rómeó és Júlia subtitled videos existed since 2008. People from all over the world wanted to understand Hungarian and I am very happy about that.)

[alleyskywalker]

Yesss I saw that Emoty Chairs one <3 Thank you for the vid link to LFoR - agh that song already gets to me and now it’s just even sadder 😓😃🥰

Wiki is telling me that Bereczki Zoltán played Marius in Les Mis at one point and….wow. (Also, I would love to see that.)

[epileptictybalt]

Barista: How would you like your coffee?

Mercutio: As dark and bitter as my soul.

Benvolio: He'll have a white chocholate moccha.

[adreamerinthenight]

Krisztian Bereczki & Zoltan Voros - Hungary’s Hottest Bodybuilders! Zoltan stopped competing way too soon.

[bencutiostan]

Hi guys in Italy it's 5AM, it's August 2020, and I can't actually sleep cuz I came back to this alternative romeo es julia "bootleg"

I mean, it's generally extremely inferior to the official performance, BUT PLEASE CAN WE TALK ABOUT BERECZKI ZOLTAN A M A Z I N G PERFORMANCE HERE?

As an actress myself I totally understand him slightly changing his interpretation of the character to explore his role more, and I totally love how he played Mercutio here.

It's slightly more dramatic, deep, he's still the playful crazy boy we're accustomed to but he totally added a strong melancholic reinterpretation here.

If you've never watched this ugh I don't recommend watching the whole thing BUT PLEASE CHECK ZOLI'S SONGS (especially le duel and la mort de mercutio) BECAUSE HIS PERFORMANCE IS SOMETHING ELSE.

I love him so much bye and goodnight.