YOUTH WITHOUT OLD AGE, and LIFE WITHOUT DEATH

Myth and skilled movement comes in a remarkable show by second-year students from The Theatre and Film Academy in Bucharest. Six students enact a Romanian folktale about a royal scion projected into a deathless fairyland: they turn effortlessly into horses, birds, monsters, sing beautiful folk songs and make brilliant use of two flexible trestle tables.

Michael Billington - The Guardian, UK

The play is a version of the Romanian folk myth in which Dorde searches for the elusive goal of immortality. Six actors tell the tale in their native tongue. The formidable language barrier is effortlessly overcome, however, in an enchanting spectacle of vocal and physical dexterity. Dorde is assisted in his journey by the Magic Horse - Murgu. These charming and ingenious young performers richly rewarded those who ventured along to this show at this late hour during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Toby Harnden - The Scotsman

The major supporting program of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is larger than ever before this year, with five hundred and forty troupes from all parts of the world and almost eleven thousand events (including two hundred and fifty premieres). In this overwhelming abundance of largely artistically meaningless performances, it is always important to discover the performances that outshine everything else in terms of originality and imagination or virtuosity of performance and therefore remain in memory. Six seventeen to eighteen year old Romanian acting students from the Academy of Theater and film in Bucharest, three girls and three young men, and their director Nona Ciobanu, who is the same age, have achieved a small miracle with their production entitled 'Eternal Youth and Life Without Death'. The performance only lasts an hour, but as a viewer you have the impression that in this one hour the entire universe of young people's imagination is explored in an indescribably playful, unsentimental, serious and graceful way. With the story of the hero of the Romanian folk legend, the refuses to be born until he is promised eternal youth; who is introduced to the beauty and dangers of life by a miracle horse, who, after many temptations, advances into the land of disorder and finally reaches the fairytale land of eternal youth, where he cannot cope with the timelessness of his existence, longs for his origins and the way back to his own death - the troupe opens the door into a fairytale world, the world of pure play, which is lived out with childlike imagination, overcomes all the hardships of the reality that surrounds us and allows us to look into a paradise that promises the experience of timeless happiness to those who find it.

The troupe performs without a set or costumes and with a small platform that can be broken down into individual elements that, like the actors themselves, continually transform and change their meaning. With a childlike playfulness that surpasses everything I have ever seen in this respect, with artistic agility, full of wit and exuberance, formalized down to the smallest detail in every gesture, every tone and yet dreamily solved, it leads us into the rarely entered no-man's-land of the imagination, in which theater is at home, and introduces us to a language of expression,  which seems strange and new and yet knows how to say much more than the language we are familiar with.

Where theater is at home - First report from the Edinburgh Festival 1992

Lutz Liebelt, Germany

- 1992.08.22/DS Kultur 1992.08.24/SWF Kultur aktuell/WDR/RIAS/BR (various versions)

The pick of Bucharest's drama students performs the Romanian folk-tale of the empress's child, his marvellous horse Murgu, and their quest to escape Death. The growth of the child from a scrunchy-faced baby into "the man who yearns" is the core of a winning lead performance by Iulian Baltatescu. Around him, the other actors switch characters with perfect clarity and control, creating a series of distinct magical worlds.

Nona Ciobanu's voice and movement direction are beautifully orchestrated to generate a fresh atmosphere for each scene. Although the play is performed in Romanian, the frank performance style and limpid storytelling will charm the stubbornest audience.

Tom Morris - The Independent, UK

Simple and highly communicative, telling the story of human life with the metaphors and aphorisms of the fairy tale, this show evinces a meticulous and complicated work in all its freshness. The actors were guided to prefigurations of characters (each one is doing four, five or six), and not towards enactment, which presupposes overcoming great difficulty and finding configurative details for each scenic presence and each episode.

But relationships work effortlessly and metamorphosis flows uninterruptedly, while shout alternates with whisper, human voice with watery sound or the murmur of the forest, voice with silence - once again making us suspect the immense labor that went into creating these situations.

I would say that ingenuity, spontaneity and teamwork define this show - bringing into representation all the corporeal and vocal capacities of the histrionic nature.

The pace of the story and the technical virtuosity produce a whirlpool of fantasy, which captures the viewer. We are looking forward to seeing both actors and directors in future exploits towards the profound layers of the soul.

In 1992, the show toured the Edinburgh festival. My British colleague Michael Billington, an astute spirit and a fair critic, confessed to me that he was developing an interest for Romanian theatre. He wrote in "The Guardian" that he found this mythical show remarkable. I passionately agree.

Valentin Silvestru - Meridian

As a second year show, this is outstanding, a landmark.

Nona Ciobanu has a frantic imagination that always has its justifications on stage. Everything is charming, richly connotative and profound. The actors play with talent, joy and confidence. In Edinburgh they had very good reviews from British critics, an excellent advertisement for the Romanian school of acting and directing.

Victor Rebengiuc

Nona Ciobanu's show is endearing and fresh, full of invention and fantasy in its usage of the sparse set design elements.

Dan Jitianu

A territory of free imagination, but also of cultural fantasy, Nona Ciobanu's show contains, in its mythical realism - the substance of the absolute, the power of dreaming beyond the frontiers of the human soul. Based on Eduard Covali's adaptation of the fairy tale, the show is magic, recharging like a perpetuum mobile with a divine power: that of the life and death game, a game which is at times serious or deep, and at times playful. Bulandra Theatre has an exceptional premiere.

Ioan Lazar - Tineretul liber

Bulandra Theatre in cooperation with the Academy of Theatre and Film in Bucharest presents a rather original performance against the background of Romanian theatrical life.

Everlasting Youth and Life Without Death," a play directed by Nona Ciobanu, was premiered in the autumn of 1992 in the Fringe section of the International Theatre Festival Edinburgh, Scotland. Michael Billington, a rather feared theatre critic, mentioned in "The Guardian" the young Romanian actors, attributing to them magical forces which helped them turn, without the slightest effort, into horses, birds or monsters.

Based on Eduard Covali's text, which is difficult and not easy to adapt, the performance has a cast made up of six students attending the acting courses given by Grigore Gonta and Dem Radulescu: Ioana Abur, Tania Popa, Dana Tapalaga, Iulian Baltatescu, Lucian Ifrim and Ionut Pohariu. The simple set elements and stylized movement and gestures challenge the spectators' imagination. In a coherent management vision, full of phantasy and theatrical force, Nona Ciobanu urges an attitude of making fun and mocking at one's worries and troubles.

So, on January 22, 24, 26 and 29, 18.00 hours, you are invited to Bulandra Theatre, the Gradina Icoanei Hall to see this performance which will surely appeal to all categories of audiences, due to its freshness and inventivity.

Ramona Mitrica - Nine O'Clock