THE COLONY OF ANGELS
by Ştefan Caraman
The waiters in a luxurious restaurant are incurable patients dressed up as angels, and their condition entitles them to commit any acts, assaulting their customers included. The latter come to watch the macabre live show of human decay and death and pay hefty sums for it.
Among the employees, a girl with a beautiful voice, She, is the only source of beauty and joy for the two friends, Gavrila and Mihaita. When the Old Man, one of the customers, offers to pay for an expensive treatment for the girl, the two kill her. The owner elopes with one of the female customers, and the new boss changes the venue into a hard-rock restaurant, with waiters dressed as devils.
I imagined in the performance, a mirror that reflects, (re)transform, (re)invent, (re)compose an underground space of a bar- restaurant. Perhaps this mirror acts in the same way to the most sensitive part of the inner self. The bar- restaurant is a dark place where the light needs a specific sound to be created. A place which consists of the same element, a cube cut, which can be repeated and recomposed infinitely in its scenic function, as a table, or an abstract object with specific and realistic meanings. An underground area where there is still a subterranean layer (and maybe another, and another one), but also a ladder to the sky. A place where time freezes and flows according to the laws of angels.
Nona Ciobanu
MIC Theatre
OCTOBER 2007
Directed by
NONA CIOBANU
Setdesign, light-design, multimedia
IULIAN BĂLŢĂTESCU
Coregraphie
FLORIN FIEROIU
Music, setdesign
NONA CIOBANU
Foto Gallery
Cast
ALEXANDRU REPAN
(Mihăiţă)
CRISTIAN IACOB
(Gavrilă)
MITICĂ POPESCU
(Old man)
LILIANA PANĂ
(Girl)
RADU ZETU
(Boss)
SIMONA MIHĂESCU
(Ana)
PETRE MORARU
(Vili)
MIHAELA RĂDULESCU
(Rafael)
FLORENTINA ŢILEA
(Young girl 1, Uriel)
VALENTINA POPA
(Young girl 2, Selatiil)
CRISTIAN POPA
(Young man 1, Gudiil)
AURELIAN CĂLIN
(Young man 2, Client)
WLADIMIR PESANTEZ
(Client)
CONSTANTIN BOBEIU
(Craftman for wings)
BOGDAN ANGHELESCU
(Serafim)
NIKI IEREMCIUC,
FLOREĂ STANOI
MIRCEA LUCIANU CAPELINI
CRISTIAN NEGOIŢĂ
(Clients)
Awards
THE AWARD FOR BEST ROMANIAN PLAY OF THE YEAR 2005 – A UNITER ANNUAL PROGRAM
“The Colony of Angels” („Colonia îngerilor“) by Stefan Caraman
Reviews
A restaurant where all employed waiters are sick in the terminal stages, but they are allowed to do everything they want to their customers. Since its inception, the employer offers to his waiters a pair of kitschy angel wings and names as Michael, Gabriel ... A macabre atmosphere for which the customers pay serious money to attend a show given by waiters ill of AIDS or cancer ... The waiters have their privilege to torture the customers who give tips to be beaten or to be ridiculed by those who agonize. The climax is reached when one of the waiters dies, the customer satisfaction being close to madness, and the driving on the last voyage ceremony of the deceased is by pulling out his angel wings and by destruction of money collected. A very courageous performance of the grotesque. Asked about this strange colony of angels, the author of the play said that sometimes it seems that all of Romania is a place populated by many inevitably incurable creatures.
Financial Week
Good text, smart lines and a unique sense of humor. Fallen angels, incurably ill, a restaurant "five crosses" and an unscrupulous Patron. Kitsch, but as well as true beauty, prostitution and purity, a grotesque spectacle of death, as well the one of life full of optimism. Grief, helplessness, resignation. Curtain falls, but the pain persists. All this in the form of "Colony of Angels. "
Nine O'Clock
A restaurant owner has the brilliant idea to hire personal service that is only terminally ill (and noncontagious). And customers who come, come to eat the show of death. Nona Ciobanu, the director of this show gets very far. Images of a broken life, tragedy, dark comedy, all happening in a huge grotesque framework, that's what she manages to create. The two archangels: Michael, Mihaitza (Alexander Repan) and Gabriel-Gavrila (Cristi Iacob) take the brunt of the show and go together beautifully, in a chemistry of a relationship built with humor and truth. Nona Ciobanu brought a mirror so that the border between real and imaginary could be more easily passed. It is a huge projection screen. Faithful to reality at the beginning of the performance the mirror is then becoming more distorted. I recommend the performance to anyone. Maybe not everyone. If you have a problem with profanity, then be careful. You will have a revelation: angels are cursing!
Metropotam
The director, Nona Ciobanu, realized the potential of the text in 2005 and decided to stage it, knowing to highlight both the drama, and the dark humor. Moreover, she played well with the visual possibilities of a big screen on the back of the stage, which starts from projecting live recording during the performance and get to super graphical abstract images. A clock measures as well an abstract time. In the usual visual depictions, life is happening above the earth, "on ground", and death is underground, but in this performance it is completely reversed. The directing concept and the set design are admirable, top view live recording together with front video live recording, everything being connected, coherent and clearly articulated. As for the actors, Alexandru Repan, Mitică Popescu, Cristian Iacob, they were magnificent...
Cotidianul
A patron of the bar has a great idea, to employ non contagious dying waiters, to whom he will attach the angels kitschy wings, in order to offer to the customers a pathetic show and morbid jokes. The bar is obviously successful, customers come every night breathlessly waiting to crack an angel, this being the reason that they give so much money. And when their wish is finally fulfilled, they are in ecstasy! Everything seems greasy and serious at the same time, metaphysics being extremely well played: either dramatic or ironic. And the irony is having not a better example than the bar menu's Colony of Angels has it: Critique of Piuré Reason (Monday), Pilaf from Pont (Tuesday), Simultaneous Cabbage (Wednesday), Divorced Eggs (Friday), etc.. or that at the entry is a mercurial, where is stipulated that tipping to the angels is according on how close to death they are. Colony of Angels has a fine and special poetry, not that pretty as in the conventional approaches, due to the death topic of the play, it excites and urges the audience to meditation ...