How much is art and how much is kitsch? People, people this is it!

foto: Adrian Piclisan

The National Theatre from Timişoara reopened Room Nr.2, the famous imperial riding house, which was transformed into a theatre for the first time, concomitantly with Radu Afrim’s staging The Disease of M. Family. Renovated and modernized, the new room remained the same opened space in which the scenographers can play the fools at their ease. And since in the theatrical world everything is celebrated through work, the ribbon of Room Nr. 2 was cut with a new premiere: The Reviser by Gogol, in Petru Vutcărău’s directorial vision.

He manages to bring to the surface, like an archaeologist (assisted by the scenographer Stela Verebceanu) digging through mud, an entire human settlement. Swimming through mire, crossing back and forth bridges and footbridges, the residence of the small town from a remote region survive the weather and the times as they can, giving and receiving bribes, buying the benevolence of the supreme gods through slavishness, adulation and a few roubles. The performance begins with a pleasure meeting between the influential people of the town, on a thickly rain that instead of cleaning the space, it “refreshed” the mud, while” the guys” attended to their sweet life. They fish, they worm up with a shot of vodka and they gobble up stakes made by the servants under the horse’s nozzle. Ruining their party mood, the mayor reports that an intruder, a kind of “virus” who brings misfortunes, could ruin their peaceful living: a reviser form the centre.

Since the reviser from across the Prut is a connoisseur of the Russian artists and of their world, the Russian ambience is very convincingly “drawn”: popular dances, marry costumes, the perpetual oscillation of the Russian between vodka and faith and so on. The profound Russia is evidently caricaturised that is why the colours of the costumes are more vivid and slightly kitschy. The omnipresent ooze alludes to the idea of bog, while the Corruption is a Bermuda Triangle where all consciences are lost. The characters are caricatures as well. They act roughly and stressed underlining the aspect of handiwork in a caricature of the caricature. It seems that we no longer talk of real people, but of schematic drawings, bi-dimensional ones. The stage is filled to the brim by such creatures whose lives are just figuration. The actors had a difficult task: to act the “kitsch” without really being kitschy themselves. Some of them had appearances that cannot be easily forgotten. Cătălin Ursu, Hlestakov, appears in front of the dregs wearing varnished boots, tall to the waist, as if coming from a sadomasochist movie and wearing a cloak like a monarch, leaving the “town” open-mouthed.

“The reviser” is a congenial idler, who enjoys practical jokes, rather than hunting after gains, and Cătălin Ursu manages to grasp the freshness and the ludic touch of the character. Andrea Tokai has a comic part, contre-emploi, being the virginal and timid daughter, melodramatically, telenovela-like and OTV-like in love with the “reviser” Hlestakov. Ion Rizea (the mayor) admirably succeeds to maintain his scenic “equilibrium”, not failing, although it could have been easy. The other clerks compose a very amusing collective character, with many masks, moving as a group, as a folk dance ensemble, doing more or less the same gestures, and having variations on the same discourse.

The text is as fresh as possible, and in a country like ours, with Prime Ministers that can be “bribed” with sausages, pig fat and Transylvanian plum brandy, Gogol would feel like home. If the defunct Nikolai Vasilievici knew, what a dramaturgical potential have our high official, he would ask the Mighty God for a new “repartition”.