by Eugen Ionescu
Translation: Mariana Şora

Artistic director: Ion Ciubotaru
Scenography: Camelia Köteles Panait
Premiere date: February 2000

The absurd play "Delirium in two, in three... in as many as you want" takes up a favorite theme of Ionesque theater: that of the couple whose existence is based on mockery, on trifles that are given a capital importance by abolishing any system of values.

For seventeen years together, He and She have been struggling with a lack of communication. The little marital war is built around the dilemma of whether or not the turtle and the snail are one and the same animal. The argument seems to be the essential existential mode of the two characters, but also of the secondary couple, the Neighbors, who go through the same states. We are dealing with a fierce dispute, with invectives and harassment about nothing, basically; it is a way of discussing about something, but also to respond to the disturbances outside. Because in the outside world, too, a generic, nameless war is going on, which even affects the apartment where He and She live. This war also has no meaning: "At least, when they fight, at first they don't know why they do it, they discover their reasons over time. They don't overcome their reasons, or, if they overcome them, then everything is channeled towards a direction, and when everything is over, they have to start over." The absence of confrontation triggers panic: "Peace has broken out. They made peace. And what will happen to us?"„

Thus, the inner and outer struggle mirror each other. The arguments in the apartment are only a reduced expression of the madness outside. The impersonal history rivals the violence of the personal language, which disaggregates, and the play's development resembles a morbid joke that never ends, a mechanism that spins in vain. Interhuman relationships gradually dissolve, as does the border between reality and the absurd. Delirium becomes generalized, and the characters remain from beginning to end prisoners of their own experiences, dramas and misunderstandings.

How can we hope for peace and communication if we cannot hear, or even listen to, each other?

Distribution:

It:  Paula Chirila
He:  Serban Borda
Neighbor:  Andrian Locovei
Neighbor:  Angela Tanko
The soldier:  Igor Lungu

Technical director: Florin Popescu
Prompter: Florence Szabo
Lights: Iosif Balogh, Sorin Precup, László Attila Oláh
Sound: Sorin Domide