She belongs among the most cultivated, most intellectual actresses; passion, elegance and lyricism mingle in her acting. Although she is primarily regarded as a stage actress, she has nonetheless appeared in many films and television films. Her close attachment to literature and poetry is indicated by the fact that for more than twenty years she was a regular contributor to the popular literary program Lyukasóra on Duna Television, and she also appeared regularly in the Radio Theatre and poetry programs of Kossuth Radio. As a dubbing actress she lent her voice to more than one hundred films. A long line of major dramatic roles is associated with her name right up to the most recent years.
Her career start is also strongly linked to poetry: Anna Kubik first came to public attention in the 1977 Ki mit tud?, where she placed third in the poetry and prose recitation competition. She has a paradoxical relationship with performing, since on the one hand she does not consider herself an exhibitionist, describing herself rather as a contemplative type, yet on the other hand she feels a strong urge to share her thoughts with others on stage or platform. She does not consider herself a born actress; it was through literature that the world of theatre drew her in. After finishing secondary school she became a bookshop assistant in the Vajda János bookshop in Székesfehérvár. This period greatly nurtured her attraction to poetry and books, as the lively literary scene of the time “steered” the best contemporary poets and performers into the shop. Sándor Csoóri visited often, and Mariann Csernus would bring the poems of Sándor Weöres. Anna Kubik read a great deal; thanks to András Görömbei’s book she discovered, for example, the poetry of István Sinka.
In 1977 she was admitted to the acting department of the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, where her masters were Károly Kazimir and István Iglódi. Thanks to this, she could try her wings already as a student in the workshop of an outstanding director, and she appeared in monumental productions such as Hiawata, Kalevala, Énekek éneke at the Thália Theatre and the Körszínház. After graduation she spent one season at the Népszínház, and then László Vámos engaged her for the National Theatre, where in about ten years she played the most significant roles of dramatic literature, from Shakespeare’s Juliet through Vörösmarty’s Tünde to Brecht’s Grusha.
Her most important performance during this period was in András Sütő’s Advent a Hargitán (Advent on the Hargita). Its premiere created an almost revolutionary atmosphere, which the actress recalled in her inaugural address to the Academy: “The world premiere of Advent on the Hargita took place on 2 January 1986 at the National Theatre; the originally scheduled premiere was not permitted by the Romanian authorities. Meanwhile the posters were already out on the street, László Ablonczy ‘forgot’ to say that the issue of Film Színház Muzsika prepared for the printer should be stopped, and instead of the cancelled performance István Bubik refused to play the lead role in Tartuffe. All Budapest wanted to get into the premiere; the audience was larger than ever seen before, but the author could not be present because he was not granted a passport by the Romanian authorities.” This unusual premiere, set within a charged historical context, became decisive for the artist’s entire career, and it also established that in Anna Kubik’s case the authenticity of acting would enter a completely new dimension. “She lives her vocation with quiet, restrained seriousness” – writes László Ablonczy, who played an important role in the creation of the original Advent production.
Katalin Szűcs, in her writing A hallgatás balladája (The Ballad of Silence), elaborates as follows: “The coexistence and interaction of a plot soaring through the realm of imagination and the reality of symbols impose an especially difficult task on the actors – above all on Anna Kubik, who plays Réka and her daughter, Little Réka, in one person, but who, in the play-within-the-play, also portrays Réka’s mother and even her own aged self. In this actor-testing role that presents four variations of one figure, the actress’s more maturely coquettish, hide-and-seek, ‘earthly’ tones are truly convincing, and with them she tips the performance somewhat toward realism. This is clearly not contrary to the director’s concept, only perhaps allows less space for lyricism than would be desirable. The voice that at times is reluctant to soften becomes a virtue in the portrayal of Réka aged by twenty years, doing penance as she searches tooth and nail for her beloved: it protects Anna Kubik from sentimentality and self-pity. Here she draws with dark, hard colours. If her vocal scale expands toward lyricism, she will have even more means to convey nuances, sudden shifts and transformations.” (Színház 1986/5.) During her ten years at the National Theatre she also played roles such as Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Melinda in Bánk bán, Castilian Blanche in King John, and Lara in Doctor Zhivago. This period also includes her portrayal of Réka in István, a király (Stephen, the King). Let us add that she did not perform only strictly classical dramatic roles during this time; for example, in the contemporary tragicomedy Barátaim! Kannibálok! (My Friends! Cannibals!) by Sándor Sultz, she authentically represents the sensibility of the modern young woman.
The following decade in Anna Kubik’s career also began at the National Theatre, with the role of Grusha in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In 1991 she played the Marquise de Sade at the Budapest Chamber Theatre, earning the recognition of both audiences and critics in a play by the world-famous Japanese author Yukio Mishima. Another outstanding performance of hers was Yerma, about which the critic of Színház writes: “Anna Kubik becomes Yerma by being a sovereign individual. Someone who, with a matter-of-fact naturalness, questions every social convention that can be questioned. She does not rebel against society itself, but against her own fate – yet this rebellion, which springs from her instincts and is not conscious at all, is evident from the first moment.” (Katalin Kállai, Színház, 1994/7.)
Among the memorable roles of this period were also Elmira in Tartuffe and Yelena Andreyevna in Uncle Vanya, both staged by Anna Kubik at the Budapest Chamber Theatre. In both figures she portrays, with sensual force and – especially in the latter – revelatory authenticity, the struggle between the natural desires of the already ageing “beautiful woman” and the modesty that seeks to restrain them.
In these years she also performed at the newly founded Művész Theatre, having joined the company at the invitation of János Taub, Mari Törőcsik and György Schwajda. Here too she amassed a series of significant roles: Polly in The Threepenny Opera, Henriette in The Learned Ladies, and the leading role in Wuthering Heights. In the meantime she played an unforgettable title role in Gyula, in Shaw’s Saint Joan. In 1999 she returned to what was then the National Theatre, later renamed the Pesti Magyar Theatre. Here she “encountered” the role of Lady Milford in Intrigue and Love. It was a weighty task, and the critical reception was far from unanimous. “Anna Kubik struggles valiantly, since Lady Milford is not her role; she is too firm, too angularly dedicated to be able to portray with sufficient frivolity the sincere theatricality of a princely favourite’s feminine and ‘actress-like’ self-sacrifice,” wrote Tamás Koltai in Élet és Irodalom. Although one may debate whether the role truly suits her, the sentence contains an interesting observation: “too firm, too angularly dedicated” – a characterisation that perhaps finds its true resonance in her later performance in Debrecen, in Magda Szabó’s Régimódi történet (An Old-Fashioned Story).
The next milestones came after the opening of the new National Theatre, where she was immediately invited as a guest to play two major leading roles: Gertrudis in Bánk bán and Aase in Peer Gynt. Attila Vidnyánszky’s production of Bánk bán enjoyed a successful run at the theatre, and the actress herself described the production as an exceptional experience in her interviews: “I regret that the National Theatre did not keep Bánk bán in its repertory for a longer time. I played Gertrudis in it, and the production is a loss because it played to full houses throughout. Among the spectators there were many who loved Attila Vidnyánszky’s direction, and many who could not accept it, but every evening one could feel that this production made the audience think. And that is the kind of experience an actor does not get very often.”
In the production that in many respects pushed formal boundaries, the Criticai Lapok critic Szilárd Zala sees Anna Kubik as versatile and liberated, and this is perhaps no coincidence, since Attila Vidnyánszky is a director with an artistic outlook “related” to hers in intellectual temperament. They had already worked together in another of his productions, and the reception of Dangerous Liaisons was likewise favourable: “Attila Vidnyánszky’s direction yields many beautiful moments. The unfolding of the love between the widow and the vicomte is particularly captivating. The silent scene accompanied only by music is extremely risky for both actor and director. Yet here the silence never feels long, the scene is so beautiful and intimate. Anna Kubik’s reserve and Győző Mihályi’s gentle determination dissolve in the heightened ecstasy of emotion.”
(Tárkányi Imre: Veszedelmes viszonyok. Kláris, 2001/1.) Moreover, they met again in 2004, in the stage adaptation made from Gogol’s work.
It is a curious coincidence that Anna Kubik signed with the theatre in Debrecen precisely when Attila Vidnyánszky became director-general of the National Theatre. Anna Ráckevei, who had been appointed to lead the Debrecen theatre, stated that she invited Kubik specifically for those roles which she herself – as director – did not wish to assign to her own repertoire. This is how Kubik came to play Mária Rickl in Magda Szabó’s Régimódi történet (An Old-Fashioned Story), a role to which we have already alluded. In this part that certain “angular dedication” seemed to reach full maturity. The actress moved to Debrecen primarily because the Magyar Theatre changed its profile, and she felt that besides youth productions (such as Rumini), she wished to show herself in other kinds of work as well. Between Székesfehérvár and the cívis city Debrecen she ultimately chose the latter, as she wanted to get to know its atmosphere. She succeeded. In the character of the “stern-bearing” Mária Rickl – one of Hungarian literature’s most complex and most beautiful figures – Anna Kubik is able to present not only that uprightness, but also the delicate, far richer emotional world hidden beneath her armour. It may thus be said that the actress found her artistic home in the cívis city. At the Csokonai Theatre she also played Gizella in József Ratkó’s Segítsd a királyt! (Help the King!) – with similarly strong results. “István burns in immense responsibility, for the great powers have for a thousand years been pushing and kicking our fate between East and West. They lecture us, drag us into wars, behave arrogantly while they do not know our language, our culture, nor the burdens we have carried with us for a millennium. The nerve-system of an ancient world and the reception of new ideas and customs unfold under the weight of the millennia-old command to survive,” writes Anna Kubik about this role in the August 2015 issue of Hitel. Among the Csokonai Theatre’s jubilee articles celebrating 150 years of its stone-built stage, one may also happily discover that Anna Kubik not only reads but writes with exceptional skill.
Anna Kubik is well known not only for her theatre roles but also for her film and television work. For her performance in the film Gyökér és vadvirág (Root and Wildflower), she was honoured with the Television and Film Critics’ Award, and she also received the Best Actress Award at the Veszprém Television Festival. She was a regular contributor to Duna Television’s literary programme Lyukasóra, to various poetry performances, and to Kossuth Radio’s Rádiószínház. As a dubbing actress, she lent her voice to 112 films, dubbing such actresses as Jodie Foster, Helen Hunt, Isabelle Huppert, Julianne Moore and Kristin Scott Thomas.
A devoted servant of culture, she has been recognised with numerous honours and awards, including the Magyar Művészetért Award, the Jászai Mari Award, the Magyar Örökség Award and, in 2011, the Kossuth Prize. Today – alongside her theatre engagements – she is a regular contributor to the Hungarian-language programmes of the M5 cultural channel.
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In 2014, she wrote in an article published on válasz.hu:
“Many people often ask me what it is like to step onto the stage. I’m honestly wary of this question, because it cannot be answered. In the past thirty-odd years there hasn’t been two evenings alike when I felt the same… This is its magic; this is what makes it frightening, this is what makes it wonderful.
There are times when one flies out of the dressing room, and times when not even a six-ox cart or some sort of combat vehicle would be enough to drag one to the boards. Sometimes I wait with tingling impatience for the curtain (where there still is one) to part, and sometimes, already in the early morning, heavy weights are lodged in my stomach, at noon my oesophagus burns, and by evening the spectre of total annihilation looms – not only because of the magnitude of the task. One can be frightened just as much by a single line as by a hundred pages. At times I feel that unless someone comes along and places one of my feet in front of the other, I will be incapable of performing that seemingly simple sequence of movements we call walking… At other times even a somersault is no problem, or climbing a rope that snaps here and there several metres above the ground (with a child inside and out), while the cheerful director lights a fire beneath me. It is incomprehensible and forever unfathomable to me what, when and why we feel before a performance. And then there are those ‘problematic-bashful’ cases (the Chief Stage Manager plopped me among them as well) who, by nature, do not exactly like showing themselves. Now, this is the hardest to explain, because of course, why would such people become actors?! Even my own sister burst out laughing when I once told her that I cannot bear being looked at… Such a performer needs most of all that stubborn belief that at 7:07 p.m. it is no longer she to whom the audience’s gaze clings, but indeed Juliet, Melinda, Gertrudis, Johanna.
I do not envy the physicist who would try to calculate the force that performs this strange ‘transformation’ on those who most prefer to hide!”
Anna Kubik possesses a sense of vocation in the noblest meaning of the word. Hungarian culture and the Hungarian language are of profound importance to her; she not only respects them, but, in her own way as an actress – through theatre as well as through poetry – she strives to popularise them. She believes with conviction that words have power, that vital national questions can also be addressed honestly on stage. Her art carries a sense of mission; in this sense it transcends the limits of the moment. With a curious play on words: Anna Kubik is an “actor doctus”.
“I see her in the wintry cold; the self-effacing Anna Kubik, who speaks in poetry about the secret currents of her life” – writes László Ablonczy in his academic laudation.
In a long 2009 interview in Hitel, the actress confessed: “For people thirst for beauty and truth under the spell of our past and present… They await the poetic word, the beautiful and true thoughts, the signs of hope.”
[2016]