{"id":780,"date":"2025-11-12T20:01:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T20:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/32\/?p=780"},"modified":"2026-01-13T20:08:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T20:08:05","slug":"through-foreign-eyes-reflecting-on-the-bucharest-national-theatre-festival-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/32\/through-foreign-eyes-reflecting-on-the-bucharest-national-theatre-festival-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Through Foreign Eyes: Reflecting on the Bucharest National Theatre Festival (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Savas Patsalidis<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This festival report offers a panoramic account of the 2025 Bucharest National Theatre Festival as seen through the eyes of a foreign spectator. The eight performances discussed, ranging from psychological realism to documentary theatre, technological hybridity, political critique, and folkloric memory, reveal a dynamic theatrical landscape negotiating between past and present, intimacy and spectacle, innovation and clich\u00e9. While productions such as Long Day\u2019s Journey into Night<\/font>, The Tempest<\/font>, and Reenactment<\/font> showcased ambitious reinterpretations of canonical or historical material, others engaged with the social pressures shaping contemporary Romania, from media violence (Lina<\/font>) to urban gentrification (Treasure City<\/font>). The article concludes with a brief commentary of two additional shows outside the festival programme: Who Killed My Father<\/font> (Teatrul Metropolis) and Rave de Ravel<\/font> at the MASCA Cultural Center, one of Bucharest\u2019s most active off-centre theatre hubs. Taken together, these works remind us, some more successfully than others, that theatre remains a space not only for emotion, but also for thought.

Keywords:<\/strong> Bucharest National Theatre Festival, contemporary Romanian theatre, audience reception, memory and history, political performance,meta-theatre, technological hybridity,urban and social critique<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bucharest National Theatre Festival, beyond the foreign productions it hosts, offers visitors a panoramic and telling view of the contemporary achievements of Romanian theatre. Nearly all of the country\u2019s national and state-funded theatres are represented, showcasing mostly large-scale, high-budget productions that are seldom encountered within the independent sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year I was able to attend only eight performances, regrettably missing several I had been particularly eager to attend, such as Botond Nagy\u2019s stage adaptation of Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s Dogtooth<\/em>. Nonetheless, the productions I did see in the 35th<\/sup> edition of the Festival offered a coherent impression of the dominant trends in contemporary Romanian theatre: works drawing on historical archives, memory, and trauma; modern interpretations of Shakespeare and other canonical texts; and productions distinguished by their striking scenographies, lighting scores and soundscapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding the audience, it was once again among the most striking aspects of this year\u2019s festival, with theatres consistently full, even on weekday afternoons. Each year I\u2019m both fascinated and perplexed by the sustained standing ovations from these highly enthusiastic spectators. They follow nearly every performance, including works that, in my view, do not merit such praise. I have no firm explanation, as I am not aware of any systematic research on local theatre audiences. The only tentative explanation I can offer, based on observing similar patterns in other former Eastern Bloc countries, from Armenia and Georgia to Bulgaria and Slovakia, is that this heightened enthusiasm may reflect a widely shared theatrical culture and mode of reception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this in mind, I now turn to the performances I attended this year, along with two outside the festival, beginning with the remarkable Long Day\u2019s Journey into Night<\/em> by Eugene O\u2019Neill, a production of the Sibiu National Theatre, directed by Timofey Kulyabin, adapted by Roman Dolzhanskiy, and translated by Raluca Radulescu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eugene O\u2019Neill, Long Day\u2019s Journey Into Night<\/em><\/strong>
Radu Stanca National Theatre, Sibiu<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
The Long Journey of Memory Through Light and Darkness<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Any adaptation of a work as significant as Long Day\u2019s Journey into Night<\/em> constitutes a multifaceted challenge. On the one hand, there is the concern not to diminish the qualitative magnitude of the original; on the other, there is the need to identify an entry point that allows the adaptor to re-read the work with a fresh perspective, one that respects the original while daring to make it resonate in a contemporary and localized context.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Nicu Miho (Edmund Tyrone), Raluca Iani (Mary Tyrone), Marius Turdeanu (James Tyrone), and Horia Fedorca (Jamie Tyrone). Absent from the family portrait is the Nurse, played by Ioana Cosma. Long Day\u2019s Journey into Night<\/em>\u2019s Tyrone family\u2014condemned to remain together, bound by love and resentment. Photo: Vlad Dumitru<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Kulyabin\u2019s directorial work, in collaboration with adaptor Dolzhanskiy, was simultaneously ambitious and audacious. The challenge extended beyond the play\u2019s content, that is to say, the what<\/em> of the text, to its very atmosphere, the how<\/em> embedded in the psychological realism of pre-second World War American theatre. During this period, Freudian thought profoundly influenced both the thematic concerns and stylistic approaches of many American modernist playwrights. Among them was Eugene O\u2019Neill, a perpetually restless artist who drew on the turbulent currents of his own life to create one of modern drama\u2019s most fully realized works of psychological realism. He began writing the play in 1939, completed the first draft in 1940, and finalized revisions by 1941.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This context, inviting as it is, presents a dilemma for any contemporary director: how does one confront a realism already deconstructed by postmodern, anti-essentialist theories of identity and behavior? How can the infernos lurking within O\u2019Neill\u2019s characters gain convincing theatrical visibility, and with what tools of excavation? Traditional methods, such as those of Stanislavski and Strasberg, seem to offer little guidance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeking to penetrate the protective shell of the Tyrone family, Kulyabin employs the poetic and self-reflexive language of metatheatre to access alternative routes into the darker recesses of the human psyche. He isolates O\u2019Neill\u2019s fragile alter ego, Edmund, situating him outside the family\u2019s suffocating milieu as an older writer recalling, frame by frame, the pivotal moments of his troubled past. On the final day of his life, he performs the act he has always known to be inevitable: to write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through this reframing, the production acquires a renewed immediacy, a heightened sense of the \u201chere and now,\u201d realized with professional precision and performative cohesion by the ensemble, consisting of Nicu Mihoc, Raluca Iani, Marius Turdeanu, Horia Fedorca, Radu Costea, Ioana Cosma, Adrian Neac\u0219u, David Cristian and Vlad Roba\u0219.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The dying Edmund (Nicu Miho). <\/em>By his side Marius Turdeanu. The long day\u2019s journey into night ends. And so does the (re)writing of the family\u2019s tragedy. Photo: Vlad Dumitru<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Within the poetics of metatheatre, narration functions not merely as recollection but as an act of embodied memory, a process of writing-as-performance that operates simultaneously as redemption and self-condemnation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Kulyabin\u2019s conception, writing becomes a generative force that directs the body, orchestrates stage action, and determines presence and absence alike. In this framework, writing itself writes, remembers, and stages memory, transforming O\u2019Neill\u2019s once closed text into a perpetually unfolding work in progress\u2014always open and in flux. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a compelling idea, no doubt, with considerable performative potential: it might have unified the play\u2019s stage elements by mediating shifts in space and time, fragmentary dialogue, and sudden leaps of memory had it been more organically and consistently integrated into the dramatic structure. But Kulyabin never fully exploits this potential. His configuration of the theatrical world ultimately limits the characters\u2019 depth and diminishes the audience\u2019s emotional engagement, particularly for viewers unfamiliar with O\u2019Neill\u2019s original text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A telling example is the mother\u2019s monologue in which she recalls her years in the convent and her first encounter with the actor who would become her husband. Although Raluca Iani delivered the scene with genuine emotional intensity, it did not fully convey the mother\u2019s existential yearning for belonging and rootedness. After years of wandering alongside her actor-husband, when she finally secured a home of her own, a space she hoped would anchor her dreams, it became instead a site of despair, a suffocating domestic prison for all who inhabited it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Edmund (Nicu Miho) and his mother, Mary Tyrone (Raluca Iani), gaze into the mirror. Once a would-be nun who married a wandering actor, Mary drifts through her fragile, ever-receding dream of finally \u201cbelonging.\u201d Photo: Vlad Dumitru<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The absence of certain textual layers made it difficult for those unfamiliar with the narrative to discern the underlying motivations of the characters\u2019 behavior. It is within this submerged text that the source of each character\u2019s guilt resides. In this family drama, no one is innocent; every figure has betrayed or wounded another. Darkness prevails, even in daylight.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Marius Turdeanu (Father Tyrone, left) and Nicu Miho (Edmund, right), with the bottle of whiskey poised between them, an ever-present catalyst of the Tyrone family\u2019s undoing. Photo: Vlad Dumitru<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Beyond the interpretive choices of the director and adaptor, Oleg Golovko constructed a liminal space, at once domestic and spectral, that mirrored the play\u2019s oscillation between past and present, balancing a degree of domestic realism with theatrical distance. Yet its bare, almost clinical appearance ultimately intensified the sense of emotional detachment rather than the play\u2019s inner heat. Yet Long Day\u2019s Journey Into Night<\/em> demands fever, conflict, and passion. The relationships O\u2019Neill forges among his characters are incandescent, even pathological; there is no distance between them. They live their tragedy within an embrace that fuses love and hatred, tenderness and destruction. In this self-constructed familial inferno, they are both perpetrators and victims. No one is innocent, and for that very reason, no one can escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, Kulyabin\u2019s decision to release Edmund from the family\u2019s vicious circle was truly inspired, as it gave him space to breathe and reflect, even if it did not attain the full depth of psychological exploration. Yet the production gained in other, equally significant ways. Kulyabin approached an immensely demanding and deeply personal play with respect, care, and imagination, managing to render it both contemporary and communicative once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been a long time since I have seen a Long Day\u2019s Journey Into Night<\/em> that kept me so alert and engaged, even if it did not fulfill every expectation I brought to the work. I would gladly see it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Special mention is due to Raluca R\u0103dulescu\u2019s translation, which preserved the linguistic richness and stylistic nuance of O\u2019Neill\u2019s text with clarity and fluency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u274a<\/strong> On the last day of life, memory writes more powerfully than any light can illuminate.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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