BUT, MOM, THEY ARE RECOUNTING IN THE SECOND ACT WHAT HAPPENED IN THE FIRST ONE
by Matei Vişniec
Matei Visniec, the most frequently popular Romanian playwright in the last
period, has a subtitle for his play: “fantasy, masquerade, buffoonery and
experiment in two acts”
Grubi and Bruno appear like a flotsam brought to the brim of the hole - a mysterious place about which everything and nothing is known. A hole which mutters, breathes, exhales smoke, stinks, shelters monsters, shines beautifully, overflows and, every now and then - when it wants -, sings angelically.
Gabriela Hurezean
MIC Theatre
1998
Directed by
NONA CIOBANU
Set, costumes, light design and music:
IULIAN BĂLTĂTESCU
Musical arrangement and digital processing:
CRISTIAN TARNOVETCHI,
CONSTANTIN FLEANCU
Foto Gallery
Cast
Grubi
GHEORGHE VISU
Bruno
PETRE NICOLAE
Pendefunda
SIMONA MIHĂESCU
Gunoierul
SORIN MEDELENI
The water carrier
AVRAM BIRĂU
The first man
VITALIE BANTAS
The second man
CLAUDIU ISTODOR
The blind man
CRISTIAN IACOB
The mother
LILIANA PANĂ
The conscript, The hasty traveller
RADU ZETU
The guide
NICOLAE ILIESCU
The visitor
ALEXANDRU REPAN
The policeman
NICULAE IEREMCIUC
The balerina
ARGENTINA DUMITRESCU
Extras
LUCIAN DAVID,
COSTEL BUD,
CODRUT STOICA,
CRISTIAN ONULESCU
Awards
Reviews
Matei Visniec, the most frequently popular Romanian playwright in the last period, has a subtitle for his play: “fantasy, masquerade, buffoonery and experiment in two acts”. He cautiously warns the director that he or she “can cut certain characters, can compose new characters, can write a different play, can modify anything and in no matter what way, except for the title: the title is sacred!
The director Nona Ciobanu has taken up the challenge and invented a show that belongs to her in its entirety. With help from Iulian Baltatescu, this time as a set and light designer, NC creates a fairly complete theatrical universe, rich in images, dynamic and imaginative. The show has a good pace in surprising the audience, it has humor, charm, youthfulness and a certain self-ironic candor, present in almost all the shows signed NC. She is not just a director she creates full-fledged theatre. As she did with “Love for Three Oranges” and “As You Like It”, the hits of the last two years at Mic Theatre, NC builds complex, surprising, imaginative, mysterious and humorous images, everything in a rhythm which keeps the spectator alert at all times. A must for theatre goers that confirms the talent of the director.
Iulia Arsintescu- Elle
The new premiere at the Mic is attractive for at least two reasons: on the one hand, “But, mom, in the second act they are telling what happened in the first act” is the most... lighthearted play in Visniec’s writing. The second reason is the director’s approach to such a text. Is NC trying to escape the style that brought her recognition, to evade the world that she knows best? From the fairy tale to the absurd, that is a spectacular leap.
The most significant thing is that, in this play, Visniec rises against... Visniec, derisively revisiting a few of his own motifs – the pair of Beckettian clowns that populate his plays, the waiting, the pit... From this viewpoint, the play starts like a “regular” Visniec.Yet after a while Visniec can’t take any more Visniec and brings his characters in riot against the playwright and the text, in the tradition of Pirandello. The play is denounced as bad. And the audience is scolded for the lack reaction: “Why were you silent when you saw it was such a bad play?”. Before having the time to get angry, the audience is treated to a glass of champagne, right in the middle of the show. The direction is alert, and the set design conceived by Iulian Baltatescu is funny, suggestive and pragmatic.