class="">Ursa Major

Read Marina Constantinescu’s review,  published in România Literară Nr. 32 (07/08/2015 – 13/08/2015).

„I always felt I was missing something when reading The Star without a Name”. That there’s a trap there somewhere and Mihail Sebastian masterfully guides the reader into it. There are two or three different images that illuminate my mind when I think of this play by Sebastian. Rodica Tapalagă as Miss Cucu, in the 1983 TV production by Eugen Todoran…Octavian Cotescu as Udrea…the English horn without which his composition, a symphony, could not be sung. „First the brass winds: pam-pam-pam-pam”… Shot in black and white, surreal images, glances, whispers, subtle resentments, tender wonderment. At the beginning of the 90s, Alexa Visarion staged the play at the National Theatre Bucharest. I still remember, I’m still touched by Carmen Galin’s Mona. And still, I have the feeling I’m missing something…

December 13^th 1943. Nora Piacentini and Mircea Şeptilici, Mihail Sebastian neighbors on  Antim Street, read the first two acts of Ursa Major. Sebastian notes in his diary: „The play pleases. Striking effect. Great enthusiasm”. The journey to the premiere was a long one. Sebastian was not allowed to sign the work. Who could take over the responsibility of a false identity? Fears and tensions were intensified by  the political situation, by the attitude towards Jewish people. Under the circumstances, putting Mihail Sebastian’s name on the poster was an absolute impossibility. For a start, Ştefan Enescu, a lawyer, a theatre lover, a neighbor of Şeptilici-Piacentini and a former school mate to Sebastian at the „Nicolae Bălcescu” high- school in Brăila, offered to assume the work himself. But finally, another solution comes up. Hallucinating coincidence? Maybe. But not just that. The play premieres at the Bucarest „Alhambra” Theatre (now Comedy Theatre), in 1944. The parts of Miss Cucu and The Professor had been especially written for actors Nora Piacentini and Radu Beligan, who get to play them in the Alhambra staging, under the theatre management of Nicu Vlădoianu and the direction of Soare Z. Soare, both accepting the plan of attributing the play to a certain „Victor Mincu”. The name of the play is changed from Ursa Major into The Star without a Name. There is a lot of suspicion and curiosity at the theatre- a completely unknown author having written this play…Beligan himself insists to find out who the real author is. Beyond all disquiet, the play opens, under the direction of Soare Z. Soare, with the following cast:

Stationmaster: Marcel Anghelescu 
A Peasant: D. Şerbănescu 
The Professor: Radu Beligan 
Ichim: C. Iordănescu 
Miss Cucu: Nora Piacentini 
A Schoolgirl: Nineta Gusti 
Pascu: N. Tomazoglu 
The Train Guard: Jirair Basmagian 
The Unknown Girl: Maria Mohor 
Udrea: Vasile Brezeanu 
Grig: Mircea Şeptilici 

In the summer of the same year,1944, the play is staged again, at the „Comedia”, today’s Odeon Theatre, under the direction of Sică Alexandrescu.

Miroiu’s sensibility, the absent minded professor, living in a sort of eventless nowhere was outlined in every staging I have watched, it’s been mentioned in reviews of the play or of its various stage versions. Still, there are passion, love, failure, prejudice, gossip. Dryness. Or not exactly. There are patterns, of course, but personal outbreaks too; there is individual salvation from personal failure. Still, Mona remained an angelic character, an innocent, pure savior, falling one night for poor weird professor Miroiu. Even if not forever…but one can never perceive a scent of caprice. Mona’s pirouettes are regarded as little extravaganzas, natural to a character who doesn’t descend from a fool’s paradise, but from a train that doesn’t even stop in this lost- in- time- place. The text is a three act comedy. Several times I found it filtered, to dim the comedic sense- except Miss Cucu’s scenes- and that most of the times the directors have built upon a mellow tone and atmosphere. Many times, The Star without a Name was gooey.

This year, at the „Bălcescu” Centre, Sebastian’s play was justly and gainfully repositioned. The Piacentini-Şeptilici apartment, where the first two acts of the play were read for the first time, is very close to this cultural center. Coincidence? Maybe not. Maybe director Victor Ioan Frunză and set- designer Adriana Grand transformed this place into a laboratory of theatrical research and studies, a place where, in time, they grew a very particular, extraordinary ensemble of actors. They staged, in very different ways, The Toth Family, then Furniture and Pain, they migrated with part of the ensemble to other theatres, to Metropolis for the Midsummer’s Night Dream, then Nottara Theatre, Portugal, „Maria Filotti” Theatre in Brăila and then in Liliom. An immense work of coagulating, an efficient construction and a directorial repertoire put together with caring for the evolution of each of the actors, in harmony, not lacking challenges. A phenomenon, I would say. From my point of view, The Star without a Name is, on all levels,  the most precious theatrical gem produced by this ensemble, coordinated by Victor Ioan Frunză and Adriana Grand. But, more than anything, it’s the first time that I discover an accurate positioning towards the characters and their keys, the first time that I experience the limitless relish of comedy in an authentic, unstrained, perfectly valid modernity. A vivid, very vivid performance, free of any marks of time and dust. In Sebastian’s play, Mona is a beautiful woman, living her life with lust, enjoying the privileges of having a rich lover, Grig, who offers her a luxury and notices and fulfills all her quirks. Slight boredom, little bit of resentment induced by jealousy and the ensuing runaway, leaving directly from the Casino in Sinaia, by train, derive from a lack of preoccupation. Her “profession” is to surround gold finch Grig of her beauty adorned with jewelry and fashionable clothes. Mona is not really an ingénue…As little as todays Misses, bathing in luxury and gravitating around a rich guy. Grig rapidly scans Mona’s portrait, her whimsy-whamsyness, and the “ridiculous” place he finds her in.

„The florist bill is ten thousand lei a month. The palest flowers are not pale enough for you. The Parma Violets brought by plane, in December, are not fragile enough for you. White lilac in January isn’t white enough (…) In Bucharest you take two baths a day, mornings and evenings, at 26.5 degrees precise…and you now washed outside, at the at the well?”

In this performance of The Star without a Name, Victor Ioan Frunză stages the text without any pampering or pose. He cuts finely between appearance and essence, very much in the spirit of Sebastian’s writing. Stories that have passed muster since ever and ever. No deceit, no sweetener. That’s the challenge of this impeccable performance. The Unknown Girl is seemingly going to stay for one night, even for- what difference would it make?- a one night’s amorous adventure, in this weird village, far away from her routine mere trifle, in a small suspicious, jabbering community, in a tender, harum scarum affair with the head-in- the sky professor. The achievement roots in the way in which the director reads the play- this is where the dynamic comes from and the actuality; the fabulous atmosphere of a train station, of an attic room  and of this deeply provincial dwelling, were all inhabitants revolve around themselves in small circles, glimpsing into the neighbor’s yard. Mona is not an ingénue lost onto the path of life, Miroiu sees the skies descending upon him and making him a man, Grig shows more than ever of his jealousy crisis. Miss Cucu stares at Grig and loses the mask when watching an impossible love story with nostalgia and complicity. The Station Master rustles in that little space that only his eyes can see as the Parisian Gare du  Nord, while Udrea negotiates very pragmatically his English horn, guessing that the visit of the Unknown Girl will spend no more than the duration of a tone in that place. Nicoleta Hâncu, Andrei Huţuleac, George Costin, Luminiţa Erga, Adrian Nicolae, Sorin Miron, strong actors for strong parts.  A very modern, minimalist acting style, fantastic up to the smallest details, with film like cut  frames in the Station masters office, the warm, perfectly tuned light in the professor’s smallish room, in this ungracious space of the „Bălcescu” centre,  used with absolute sparkle by set designer Adriana Grand. A perfect replica of those train stations I do frequent in my theatrical searches, a tiny shabby attic room, over filled with books- the professor’s room. Victor Ioan Frunză at his best, reinventing the theatrical language, reinventing humor and its refined nuances, the fabulous expressivity of words in a ridiculous, ironic, cynical context, clearly and seductively directing actors. The actors discover themselves through the details of a meticulous and charming, rhythmic acting style; they take the characters and their profiles totally over. The profiles of people we see everywhere around. Still, not as savory as here…”

 (MARINA CONSTANTINESCU)

Note:  fnt.ro / The performance „The Star without a Name “ by Mihail Sebastian, stage direction Victor Ioan Frunză, set- design Adriana Grand, Centrul Cultural pentru UNESCO „Nicolae Bălcescu” Bucharest, part if the NTF selection (October 23^rd  – November 1^st 2015, Bucharest).

Photo credit: Adriana Grand