Janika opened at the Magyar Theater, Budapest, on 23 October 1946, with Ida Turay in the role of Gizi Polgar. The author of Janika was Turay's Hungarian playwright-husband, Istvan Bekeffi (1901-77). The script called for her to be soundly spanked at the climax of each performance! Another one of those post-war, cheer up the masses plays, and made into a film in 1949, again with Ida Turay as Gizi.
The storyline is frankly absurd. It’s Christmas, and Janos, her long lost husband, has decided, at long last, to pay a return visit to the family home, not necessarily with the best of motives. Gizi is understandably unimpressed, but has difficulty expressing her feelings to her wayward husband. So she decides to put her professional skills to useful effect, and give Janos a shock. Thus he suddenly "discovers" that he has a 14-year-old son he knew nothing about.
Of course, there is no son. He is an imaginary character created and played by Gizi, with the connivance of all around her. With a cunning twist, she names this fictional son Janika, a diminutive of the name Janos. Initially taken aback, Janos quickly develops some obvious fatherly feelings for the ‘lad’. Conveniently, he doesn’t ask any awkward questions about why Gizi and Janika never seem to be in the same room at the same time. Anyway, eventually, the son annoys him so much that he gives "him" a serious spanking, somehow not realising that it is really his wife!
Performances of Janika have been fairly steady. A recent one, 2017, at the Turay Ida Színház (Ida Turay Theatre), named after the lady who was the first Janika, had LÍVIA GERMÁN as Gizi Polgár, paying for all her teasing over Kristof Kurko’s knee. (Below)
You can also see the extract from the promotional trailer, with a couple of zooms, HERE.
