Dense smoke, trim lamp shades, red light, the fire rhythms of Szép Ernő, the songs of Heltai Jenő. This is how the first Cabaret in Pest, the Bonbonniere, looked like. And what was reserved for today can be seen at the exhibition titled 'Cabaret 100'. The exhibition opened on the International Day of Museums revives the olden days of the gender, when the best of our writers, Ady Endre, Kosztolányi Dezső, Molnár Ferenc, Gárdonyi Géza, Heltai Jenő és Karinthy Frigyes, wrote for the cabaret.

The Cabaret was similar to the French one at the beginning. The canter role was played by the 'chanson'. Nevertheless, the structure of the shows was similar to those in Berlin. Scenes, soliloquies, poems, and of course tasty dramas were played one after another. In the breaks, Nagy Endre told stories and made the audience laugh. Why was the cabaret popular besides the above mentioned? Maybe because social criticism was part of the performances every day, fresh everyday events were criticized, sad truth was mentioned jokingly. Shortly, it was a kind of way recording history.

We show the kerchief of Medgyaszay Vilma who was known as the Iluska from the Valiant John, a marble table from the New York Café with the writings of Nagy Endre and Heltai Jenő. The pieces shown wish to salute the immortal writers and actors. The visitors can hear Nagy Endre on original recording, can watch old scenes, can learn about the financial situation of the cabaret via the original cash-book and can see caricatures of the most famous figure involved in cabaret.

The exhibition open until 20 September in the Budavár Palace. The National Theatre History Museum and Institution supported the exhibition.

The organizer of the exhibition was Dr. Varga Judit