by ILCaragiale

Artistic director: Radu Ghiţulescu
Scenography: Cristian Rusu
Music: László Mircea Horváth 
Premiere date: May 17, 1997

The action of the drama "Năpasta" focuses on the Ion-Anca-Dragomir triangle and develops, with a manifest dramatic tension, the theme of blood that demands blood. Blinded by erotic passion for Anca, Dragomir killed her husband, Dumitru. The victim's tobacco, pipe and amnar were found at the forester Ion's and, in the absence of another perpetrator discovered, he was sentenced to hard years of hard labor. Innocent in the eyes of the world, thanks to the woman's sensitive intuition, Dragomir is certainly the murderer. The passion for revenge will follow Anca for nine years and, in order to carry out her plan, she marries the murderer of her first husband. In these terms, director Radu Ghițulescu intuits a mythical, archetypal world: "The situation the woman married to her husband's killer is quite widespread in the mythical Balkan area" (from the show's program booklet).

While Ion atones for an act he did not commit and goes mad, Dragomir evolves from trust to despair and hatred towards the one he loved. Moreover, he is haunted by visions and dreams, Dumitru's ghost follows him everywhere, and his panic, consistently cultivated by Anca, will lead him to his final collapse. As critic V. Fanache observes in "Caragiale" (1984), the situation imagined in "Năpasta" proves "a classic balance between the punishment that falls on the innocent Ion's head and the one that will be mercilessly inflicted on Dragomir, the real culprit. (…) Dragomir's madness grows the more stubbornly he tries to hide an increasingly obvious truth, while Ion's madness manifests itself because he had failed to reveal a truth through which he could have recovered his dignity." With the appearance of Ion, who escaped from prison, Dragomir's reason degrades before the viewer's eyes.

Realizing his uselessness in the world, Ion commits suicide, and Anca accuses Dragomir of committing the crime, handing him over to the authorities; the cruel revenge occurs shortly before the ten-year term, at which, even though he was guilty of Dumitru's death, Dragomir would have been released.

Distribution:

Dragomir:  Doru Firte
Anna:  Elvira Platon Rîmbu
Ion:  Petre Panait
George:  John Coman

Technical director: Eugenia Popa
Prompter: Florence Szabo
Lighting: Iosif Balogh, Laviniu Goron
Sound: Sorin Domide