In the spring of 2022, on the Gala stage UNITY which took place then in Bystrica, we were given a promise. The local authorities, whether political or cultural, solemnly promised the soon opening of a professional theater in the city. We are also told that the overture will be signed not by anyone, but by Radu Afrim himself, who, among other assets, has the fact that he was born in the neighborhood. More precisely, in Beclean.

The promise was fulfilled, however, as were the Romanians. I only mean half of it. More precisely, the artists kept it much more strictly than the local nomenclature. The promised theater never opened, and never opened, because the past year was characterized by a terrible uncertainty about the present and future of exhibition institutions. It was not about establishment, but rather liquidation, amalgamation and false efficiency, to which intellectuals and artists naively contrasted some of Churchill’s alleged statements, as if the current tiny liberal-pedestrian rulers were impressed by the former British Prime Minister and history. Thus, the first professional theater performance was born in Bystrica as a result of the cooperation of the Cultural Center George Kosbuk from the area and the National Theater from Bucharest. And especially from the great dedication of director Radu Afrim. He implemented it in Bistrica in collaboration with the writer Dan Koman, who commendably turned into writing the scene, scenographers Sabina and Bianca Vermechan and several excellent actors – I named Marius Bodoci, Marius Manole, Natalia Kelin, Mirela Oprishor, Stefan Janka. and Flavia Giurgiu, the latter also in the pose of a choreographer, perhaps not necessarily the best, but certainly one of the most emotional, more humane and authentic performances that can be seen in Romania today.

The same as in Rehearsal for a better worldstaged at TNB, as well as in many of his other plays and in A few people from you Radu Afrim is worried about countless family problems. Which is neither exemplary, nor solid, nor a guarantor of success or happiness, and even more so the basic cell of society. The families on both sides are probably independent A few people away it is located under the sign of toxic. Obviously, I’m a mess. They consist of mothers who have been traumatized by violent alcoholic husbands, daughters who have been abused by their fathers, and the feeling that the distance between the parents has long been established and only an empty space remains. They are pure artificial constructs, created from sons oppressed by an acute and unjustified sense of guilt, who, in the absence of a human and genuine solution, feed on the desire to disappear. Women-mothers in Dan Coman’s new text either escape into mythomania, build artificial existences, invent lovers, supposedly like in the movies, but who, taken for granted, are only caricature constructs, or find happiness in caring for capricious minors, in The True Case of of Austria Girls from A few people from you they run after happiness and arranged marriages bought with hard money, a fact that does not save them from nightmares. The boys, like Victor from the first part of the show, hide in artificial universes and fail at terrible end stations. All of them, whether they are young, two-year-olds, or old people, are abandoned in a shelter where they communicate only with dogs that do not really exist, each of them hides the trauma of their lives as much as possible. The past (beatings, situations – absolutely impossible, as caused by Jimmy, fear, feeling of insecurity and inevitability of collapse into nothingness) are based on nostalgia. It is revealed carefully and sparingly in the show. Not only because of the words or dramatic situations, but also because of the absolutely wonderful sound design. Afrim brand compound. That is, fragments of an authentic folk song and words turned into an echo that overwhelms rather than soothes.

Characters from A few people away located in a continuum entre- deux. I shop at Lidl, count everything in euros, look for implementation in Austria, talk endlessly on a mobile phone. People look for each other and see each other on WhatsApp, they lie to themselves, they deceive themselves that they are not alone, that there is no distance between them, although the distances are everywhere and they are huge. But apart from that, beyond their appearance, they are all connected by thousands of threads not only to the places of their birth, in this case Bystrytsia, but also to communism, which will haunt them in the future. They still live in houses and apartments in areas built in the Golden Age (suggested very well in the show by the sets designed by Sabine and Bianca Vermechan), which, like Coralie, they imagine they are changing by tearing down the walls between the rooms.

Both Radu Afrim and Dan Koman noticed that two stories of life, families, sums of deprivation and failures, dramas even more terrible than the stories of Chekhov’s heroes, can hide, risking falling into melodramatic, tearful, emotional of dubious quality. They found a solution to confront sadness of all kinds by resorting to humor. To humor and authenticity. Characters from A few people from you I speak with a weak accent characteristic of the place. I cry, I laugh consciously or unconsciously. This causes repeated laughter from the audience. I do this without falling, even for a second, into mockery, advertising, or caricature. They play both with themselves and with us, laugh and cry. Which is perfectly played by all members of the cast. Some of them act in several roles. In both parts of the show.

Natalia Kelin is absolutely fascinating in the role of Mariana, Mirela Oprishor shines in the two roles assigned to her, she plays them in such a way that the first is not similar to the second, nor to the one in Las Fierbinti, Flavia Giurgiu perfectly plays the innocence as well as the defeat of all kinds of Ellie, Marius Manole is a defeated rebel but also the author of parody with great taste, Stefan Janku, the youngest member of the cast, captivates with the sophistication and balance with which he embodied Jimmy. And finally, Marius Bodocci makes another sensation after doing it again in Rehearsal for a better world. He is completely different, he is rethought, he is human, he is without grimaces, without rhetoric. –

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