Cheerful Apocalypse

Sparrow on the Roof by Adam Rapp, directed by Radu Afrim, 74 Theatre, Targu Mureș

On the stage, a retarded boy, Ricky the Grand, speaks mostly in verse, believes he is a cheerful bunny, but show some inclinations for rape. His mother, Auntie Blackberry, an odd girl delivering apocalyptic lines, is obsessed and terrified by mice. One of them appears embodied having only a head, like in puppet theatre. A criminal escaped from jail, and a bone thief, piles up the objects of his passion (bones, obviously), with the help of the girl everyone spins around. We learn about it all in Sparrow on the Roof by Adam Rapp (American playwright born in 1968), directed by Radu Afrim, 74 Theatre, Targu Mureș, little by little, as in a detective novel, through disparate fragments. The blurred stories of the characters complicate even more with the dreamy visions of the feminine characters, whose mind Gongoristically aggregate reality, according to laws known only to them. However, although these remained phantasmal, the two women describe a richness of scenes, one more fantasist than the other, with red fish leaping into a melted butter lake or birds reciting Shakespeare. Two other worshipers of the girls fill the stage, the nerdy carpenter, with a cap and a balloon, who passionately loves the girl and writes the included poem for her, and the clerk from the Missing Persons Bureau, with Theo Marton in a delightful lunatic, hundred percent Afrimian, not to mention weary and apathetic. In this entire tangle, the last thing the director wants to do is to clarify things. What he seems keen to bring to the front stage is the playful surrealism atmosphere. And, as usual, he manages matchlessly.

For the rest, the director pushes all intentions into gestures. Any thought, attitude, not to mention emotion are turned into motion. When the clerk played by Theo Marton victoriously gets on top of the girl, he can't take his boots off. Radu Afrim turns any situation in an avalanche of gestures flowing one from the other in the familiar universe, with perfectly recognisable relations (woman – man, mother – child). Only that the director delivers the world on stage in a different language, endowed with a consistent share of the absurd. However, the rule number 1 is to melt away any contorted situation in the interpretation. And actors delightfully and sparklingly dive into the genuinely playful code. All characters are cute, as they were all gifted from the very beginning with heaps of candour and every actor constructs an apparition with of strong identity. The audience is entertained in rhymes, regional terms, paradoxes and linguistic contrasts, as well as the songs sand on the platform. In the text already filled with comical paradoxes, the director mixes clichés good for a nice fall into derision (“Grab your Bibles and start praying”), with the karate or sumo movements that the mental of the TV viewers is invaded with (Cătălin Mândru, focused and sparkling at the same time, in the role of the retarded-bunny-raping-karateka). And obviously things can't stop here. There is also a general situation. Flooding is near and everyone needs to evict their homes and move to roof top, with everything they have, clothes and trinkets. The small apocalypse slice served by the American playwright is coloured in local tones in a parody of national cultural legacy, like the famous verse from Ienăchiță Văcărescu, “for another might come and take it away from me”, or the character Auntie Blackberry, the widowed mother of the retarded boy. Cristina Toma, energetically and funny in the role of a passionate mice adversary, delivers apocalyptic speeches on “Satan's clarinet, a bat making out confusing incantations”. The actress is particularly thrilling in the Breaking News moment, a sort of a 5 O’clock News, where protagonists where replaced by animals.

This is not the first time when everything turns with Afrim into “brief news” perfectly suited for a holy comical gossip, included the flooding which sank “seven counties under water”. Actually, the text provides a crossing of mystical-pornographic discourses perfect for the director to create comical situations on, plus a tint of delicacy. Characters come from nowhere and only head for the flooding. To this world comically troubled, composed of a mixture of biography, some detective novel and some languid cabaret halo, the directors ads, pour la bonne bouche, songs by Ada Milea, plus large amounts of comical rhymes and playful diminutive. Nicu Mihoc's character takes his lover for a gift a bear which caught a small crucian between his teeth. When he is refused he leaves and takes his decoration back. Therefore, the director doesn't miss either any chance of comical linguistic contortions, “the river is swollen like a pitong from global warming”, nor that of indulging into every day clichés, with the flooding discounts in shops, nor the common automatisms funnily put together, as when the girl won't let her guest step on the flowers on the... carpet.

However, situations remain aberrant from beginning to end, and suspense doesn't go anywhere, as the mysterious disappearance of the main character's twin sister is not clarified in any way. Especially since the gone missing, cabaret singer and prostitute, whose sister lingered on the roof when clients came, bumps in every now and then for a short song, in the person of the same actress, to the funny confusion of the audience. All this while the bone thief (Cristian Bojan), well masked, crosses the stage like a shadow in the dark. The girl everyone spins around is played by Claudia Ardelean, a special actress, who injects a touch of seriousness to her character filled with mystery, easily ranging voices and attitudes. The girl is now scared, then violent, then languid, then lost, after which she dances and sings lascivious songs, or laughs and then freezes. At times, the confused creature slips, as in a trance, a voice on hoarse and scary tones. That's from her double personality! Other than that, the missing sister's twin leaves behind her, everywhere in the room, an erotic scent triggering reactions from everyone. Moreover, Radu Afrim's collection includes objects slipping from reality, a sort of a scare-crow-dummy (costume consultant is Maria Gliga), hosting the main character from the beginning to the end, a small cabin hiding at the same time bones, people and a well lit x-ray.

In this intended welter, each character slips by the other, remaining in his own world, as nobody understands anybody. One keeps on about his door, the other with religion. Each is focused on himself, has his own caprices and indulges into them by himself. As life situations remain only excuses, Afrim creates in Sparrow on the Roof a true comical poem of the gestures' futility. Seemingly chaotic gestures luxuriance guarantees the interpretation's grounds in a pure state. And actors eagerly abandon themselves to this state. The “Hingeman” played by Nicu Mihoc, who manufactured for the main character a door out of the remainders left by the volunteers, drills a hole with the borer in the cabin where the girl was hiding. Just for the view, of course! For no other reason that the key hole turned out to be insufficient. He will then cover the hole with chewing gum. When the girl faints, the carpenter lover sprays her with fizzy water. His passion is comically speculated to the maximum by Nicu Mihoc, an actor filling in waves the entire universe with his sparkling presence. The avalanche of comical gestures will climax with the moment when believing that his love has been startled to death, the man wipes all his fingerprints with his handkerchief and walk on all fours without laying his hands on the floor. Then, feeling that this was not enough, he rolls on the floor, in order not to leave any trace. In such scenes, Sparrow on the Roof wins the audience over through the delightfulness of the interpretation, and the flow of Afrimian actions and gestures, of unbeatable comic, orchestrally creating the feeling of an effervescence of the impossibly controlled living.