The première of "Liliom" at Budapest in December, 1909, left both playgoer and critic a bit bewildered. It was not the sort of play the Hungarian capital had been accustomed to expect of its favorite dramatist, whose The Devil, after two years of unprecedented success, was still crowding the theatres of two continents.
One must, it was true, count on a touch of fantasy in every Molnar work. Never had he been wholly content with everyday reality, not in his stories, or in his sketches or in his earlier plays; and least of all in The Devil wherein the natural and supernatural were most whimsically blended. But in Liliom, it seemed, he had carried fantasy to quite unintelligible lengths. Budapest was frankly puzzled.
What did he mean by killing his hero in the fifth scene, taking him into Heaven in the sixth and bringing him back to earth in the seventh? Was this prosaic Heaven of his seriously or satirically intended? Was Liliom a saint or a common tough? And was his abortive redemption a symbol or merely
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