The Visit to the Father, in Timisoara

As we are have accustomed, The Theatre “M .Eminescu” in Timisoara, offered another magnificent evening with a performance freshly released from under the directorial baguette.  Although everyone’s thinking about leisure, holidays, the sea and the beach, the company in Timisoara, in mid-summer scorch, on July 18, 2010, has to pass another examination in front of an audience coming from different parts of the country for a taste of true art in the capital of Banat.

The Visit to the Father is a play written by German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig, well known all around the world and staged in over forty countries. Playwright, director, drama teacher, Schimmelpfennig brings in his works the major problems of the contemporary man: alienation, loneliness, anxiety, lack of communication, inherited flaws, repressed complexes. His plays have appeal for contemporary men. The playwright was assistant director to Thomas Ostermeier, who brought his famous Hamlet this year in Romania at the Shakespeare Festival. The play is the first part in a dramatic trilogy, The Animal Trilogy, together with The Animal Kingdom and End and Beginning.

The storyline is quite simple: a son, who never knew his father, the result of an affair with a sixteen years old girl, leaves after his mother’s death in an initiatory journey, to meet his father. After a two weeks travel he reaches his house, which is actually the house of his father's wife. He finds here a homey universe where four women of different ages live: Edith, his father's wife, Sonja, Edith's sister daughter, Isabel, Edith’s youngest daughter and Marietta, Edith’s eldest daughter. His father, Helmut, the only man of the house, translates John Milton's Paradise Lost, but, at times of rest for the spirit he devotes himself to hunting and flirting. A secretly, or maybe no longer secretly, loves Sonja. This is the household that Peter arrives to. Following his father's flaws, enhancing them even, like a good son exceeding the parental model, the son seduces three women in the house: Edith, Sonja and Marietta.

The dual space, that of the spiritual and moral collapse, of the marriage and extramarital affair, the house hosting a Chekhovian world of Ibsenian influences, chocked, closed and frozen, full of frustrations (Sonja wants a child who no longer comes, Marietta has reached a respectable age and there are no plans for marriage, Isabel hopes to become a famous actress but does not receive any part, Edith accepts a husband who cheats on her in her own house, the son coming from amiss, to stay for an undetermined period, with no plans for the future).

The wild duck sacrificed is a binder for several sequences in the plot: it is hunted by Helmut and his lover, Sonja, the women of the house do not know the order of the cooking process, Helmut takes out its slurry filled guts, a hint to the dirty world, the guests (the teacher and Nadja) are served roast duck at the table, the dispute about the plague spread by wild birds.

The artistic director of the play is a name that needs no presentation, Alexandru Dabija, the man who always gets to the actor's soul, to its inner core, managing to bring out the best in each artist, to bring out the latent qualities of the role player. Dabija manages to link different registers, complex and diverse personalities, individualized psychologies, making the show to run with great fluency, offering a kaleidoscope of personalities and characters dominated by sin, desire and repression.

The classical scenery, a possible suggestion for the appearance of a settled and refined world but also of the age and constancy of the inherited flaws, an image of the domestic universe hiding failures, sins, and fights under the guise of an honourable family... is the work of the famous Romanian scenographer, born in Timisoara and living in Munich, Helmut Stürmer, that the audience knows from the spectacular scenery in Faust, staged by Silviu Purcarete in Sibiu in 2007. The mirrors reinforce the idea of a kaleidoscope, allowing polyhedral reflections, from different angles, of the characters with the personalities defining them.

And to conclude, here’s the theatre company without which we may not have spoken now about the intense performance offered to us by Theatre “M. Eminescu” in Timisoara: Damian Oancea (Helmut) build a complex role, that of a father, husband, lover, authoritative master, translator of Milton, hater of the Russians, Edith (Victoria Suchici Codricel, returned after many years on stage), the mother of the family and wife, seduced by her stepson, expressive and nuanced, strong despite her fragility, Isabel, weary, frustrated that there’s nothing in store for her, excellently interprets despair and expectancy for saving news to snatch her out of that environment, Colin Buzoianu (Peter), the son came out of nowhere, the seducer of the women in the house, voluntary and determined, with an excellent interpretation and stage presence, Nadja and the teacher, very convincing in interpreting fear of wild duck plague or the hysteria caused by the lack of Russian classics in the house, Sonja, obsessed with her failed motherhood; they all build a well structured performance that is a must see.