When billboards appeared across the country last summer, showing a smiling Mr. Soros with the line, “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh,” anti-Semitic graffiti soon appeared on many of them. Andras Heisler, leader of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, addressed an open letter to Mr. Orban at the time: “This campaign, while not openly anti-Semitic, clearly has the potential to ignite uncontrolled emotions, including anti-Semitism,” he wrote, calling for an end to “this bad dream.”

In a phone interview this week, Mr. Heisler said that there was more public animosity in Hungary toward the Roma minority and refugees than toward Jews. But, he said, “our historical experiences suggest that it is never good to have strong hatred in a country.”

As the audience entered the venue for “The Chosen Ones,” the director and some assistants greeted them from a stand, like agents conducting a survey. They sized up each person and categorized them in groups including “cultural Jew,” “Soros Jew” or “self-hating Jew” — labels taken from public speech and online forums in Hungary. Later, a young woman performed a musical litany of hate against everyone, across the whole political and social spectrum. “Doesn’t matter why, doesn’t matter who, everyone’s a filthy something,” she sang.

Political cabaret is a popular genre in Hungary with a long tradition that survived through the country’s Communist dictatorship. Some characters in “The Chosen Ones” suggest real-life figures — one is “the prime minister,” for example — others bring to mind archetypes, such as “liberal protester.”

Mr. Borgula said the anti-Semitic slurs heard onstage “fly around in public life so much that we need to talk about them,” adding, “This is therapy, we need to laugh at it.” And plays that deal with current events are more popular with audiences than other productions in Golem Theater’s repertoire, he said.