Romanian comedy

Six decades of quality stage performance

Ion Puican, 06.02.2021, 14:00

The Comedy Theater in Bucharest on January 5th
extended an online invitation to all of us. Sixty years were celebrated since
the theater had been established. We recall that back then the premiere was
hosted on stage in Bucharest’s Old City Center. On the evening of January 5th,
1962, a unique stage version of The Famous 702 was on, delighting the public of
the theater that had been freshly founded at the heart of Bucharest. The Famous 702 The play was stage-directed by
director and professor with the Ion Luca Caragiale Drama and Film University
in Bucharest, Moni Ghelerter. The author of the play was Alexandru Mirodan, who
at that time was experiencing his career-best. The play focused on a topic
which was fresh at that time: the case of famous gangster Caryl Chessman. The
stage performance was a box office hit and was also critically acclaimed. In
the time’s Contemporanul/The Contemporary newspaper, poet and journalist Tudor
Arghezi wrote, QUOTE It is not only a theater that we’re opening, but, if you
will, we’re also opening a university of humor and joy UNQUOTE.

The legacy of the Comedy Theater in Bucharest is
remarkable, including, among other stage performances, Moliere’s The Bourgeois
Gentilhomme, premiered in 1962 and featuring Grigore Vasiliu Birlic, then it
was The shadow directed by David Esrig, in 1963. Eugene Ionesco’s The
Rhinoceros, in 1964, was also a highlight, it was a performance for which the
author himself offered rounds of applause at the Théâtre des Nations in Paris.
Gogol’s ‘Government Inspector’ directed by Horatiu Malaele, or ‘Zoika’s House’
were among the Comedy Theater’s more recent accomplishments. We recall that
actor George Mihaita scooped the UNITER’s award for best actor in a lead role,
in 2010.

Early into 2021, a stage performance, which is also a cultural
endeavor, enjoyed a virtual presence at the Comedy Theater in Bucharest. It was
an opportunity to be together, with the audience, first of all, alongside the
friends of the theater, collaborators and people of the stage. It was a very special
opportunity, about which we sat down and talked in the company of the manager
of the Comedy Theater, actor George Mihaita.

We can say that this year our
preparedness was only online, unfortunately; if you followed us on the
theater’s Facebook and Instagram pages you could have the clear image of a
retrospective of the Comedy Theater, All the actors were involved in that. We
began with a speech by the manager, I am not going to say who he is. Then we
carried a couple of projects; we started several such projects: a documentary
film about how the Comedy theater was established, its title is Comedia Remix,
the project was carried by Cristina Modreanu și Maria Drăghici. Every now and
then actors reminisced about their days in the theater, the first episode they
had, of the funniest one. We spoke about the Comedy Theater’s inaugural stage
performance, The Famous 702 featuring Radu Beligan, there is a recording of a
little story told by Lamia Beligan, Radu Beligan’s daughter, she told us the
bits and pieces she could remember. Also, we have the most recent performance,
Far away across the field, directed by Alexandru Dabija. Then we had reading
performances, for instance, made of the texts that in the last five years have
been were awarded at the Romanian comedy contest, for some of the texts we have
video footage, and that is how today, we can still have a Horia Garbea play,
directed by Dragos Huluba, with some of the theater’s young actors on the cast.
We have Theater Day Remember, we had a celebration of that day every year, but
we celebrated the Comedy Theater on January 5, we also have footage of the
previous years’ celebrations. We also had short video podcasts of personalities
uttering their words of praise. There is another project we developed jointly
with the National Museum of Romanian Literature, the great Romanian playwrights
revisited, this is fairly original stuff, for instance, we begin with George
Ciprian, with some of George’s stories, the original ones, read by Marius
Florea Vizante and we shall carry on like that in the coming months, with other
Romanian playwrights, the likes of Mazilu, Musatescu, Baiesu.

The video materials can be revisited of the Comedy
Theater’s Facebook page, where other materials will also be posted, as the
online communication is the only one we can have in the trying times we have
been going through because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is Comedy theater
manager, actor George Mihaita, once again. He will now be saying something
about what they have in store for 2021 and what projects are pending, ready to
be brought to the limelight of the virtual stage or, perhaps, the proper stage,
located in the Capital’s Old City Center. George Mihaita

In November we already had one,
titled ‘A Chekhov Workshop’, directed by Vlad Massaci who used some of
Chekhov’s short stories, a coupe performance, so to speak, with most of the
theater’s actors on the cast. We also keep our hopes high for better days so
that we can start our stage rehearsals in larger groups and continue with D’Ale
carnavalului/Only during a carnival, the work began in February last year,
it is directed by Vlad Cristache, with the theater’s young actors on the cast,
and we do hope we will sort of break a leg with that. What comes to mind, for
the time being, is that money is still tight, and we understand that, and then
we thought that the director of the theater, Massaci, or the other actors,
Mihai Bendeac, for instance, whose stage versions of Krechinsky’s wedding,
but also of Two on a bench, were extremely successful, he featured in
both shows, so we thought that they can yet again can come up with something
which is hopefully at least as good as what they have done so far. There is no
other way, we shall step up our online projects. Just as we did in spring. Once
again, I felt, through my colleagues, mostly the younger ones, I felt they were
even sadder because they were not doing their job on stage. It is a great
sadness, as it is on stage that we exist, and if we don’t get spotted from
there, that is something very delicate, it is very difficult for us. We have no
other choice. Those who are listening right now, they should come to the
theater, as seeing each other face-to-face is one thing, and just talking, that
is something totally different, it’s just like a monologue on the radio. But I
think it’s good we can say each other hello, well, considering…We get to know
something about each other.