Even the munchkins wear nappies and cartridge boxes

(story to be published in tomorrow’s issue, March 14)

The Piatra Neamt Youth Theatre accustomed us with enticing shows; whether it was a classic play or a provocative, contemporary one. This time, director Andreea Vulpe and scenographer Horatiu Mihaiu provoke us with an original “A midsummer night’s dream.” The text belongs to Shakespeare but it is read in a different manner. The Piatra Neamt team proposes a post-apocalypse milieu where the remainders of humanity are organised in a sort of power structure. Theseus (Ovidiu Crisan) and his subjects, including Hippolyta (Lucretia Mandric), seen as a tamed Amazon woman are all dressed in military garments and all suffer from cold. Still, life goes on, as we know it: love-hate-power-amusement. The eccentric part seems hidden to me in a munchkin-land universe. The munchkins are no longer the inhabitants of air but of underground, where it is probably warmer if we judge by the chimneys we see “growing” on the stage. In addition, the spirits of the new world are possessed by the pure pleasure of the game. The stylised costumes are making us imagine some sort of beanie-babies with nappies and pilot hats, with hurried gestures and fast walking (choreography by Felicia Dalu, sound by Cristian Juncu), who make fun of the human actors. The fairies of the kingdom of Oberon (Daniel Besleaga) and Titania (Roxana Frunza) do not posses a sense of the tragic, of the suffering, a “specter” better left to the mortals. On the other hand, Fundulea-Bottom (Dan Grigoras) is no longer the comical character, the foolish macho we knew; he was enlightened by the erotic experience he had with the Queen of the munchkins. The ass he was (in a metaphorical sense) turns into a sacred animal, the white donkey. The show emphasizes this side of transcendent revelation to the disadvantage of the simpler and more hilarious zoophilia, of the perversity started with the wander through the tenebrous “forest” of instincts. Puck or Robin-naughty-boy (Bogdan Talasman) here is a fatty goblin as opposed to the thin character that we usually find in the other “Midsummer Night’s Dream” shows. Also interesting is the fact that everything happens in winter, the stage is full of “snow” (you wouldn’t believe, but there are 3 tons of salt on the floor for a true-to-life illusion) an the spirits are dressed in white in contrast with humans dressed in black. The key word as a matter of fact is “illusion”, either artistic or through dreams. The story of Pyramus and Thsybe written by Peter Pana (Corneliu -Dan Borcia, the manger of Youth Thatre of Piatra Neamt, who comes back to stage after a few managerial years) becomes a tragicomedy, in which Bottom dies and disappears as a new Christ sacrificing himself for the others to understand that there is a world Beyond.