Text taken from LiterNet.ro / author: Mihai Brezeanu

Prologue

"Chronicle". With this word it begins Richard III staged by Andrei Măjeri at the Regina Maria Theater in Oradea (premiere April 5, 2025). Richard III by William Shakespeare, translated by Horia Gîrbea, with inserts from Henry VI by the same William Shakespeare. For greater precision, with insertions of Henry VI Part III, the text which, together with the first two parts of Henry VI and with Richard III, form the so-called Minor Tetralogy of Shakespeare. A set of 4 texts dedicated to the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), fought between the House of Lancaster (the red rose) and the House of York (the white rose, so to speak).

Text taken from familymagazine.ro / author: Alexandru Jurcan

The premiere of the end of the year 2024 at the Regina Maria Theater in Oradea: Elif and the rain by Sami Ibrahim, directed by Alex Ianăși. A text about the condition of the always "illegal" immigrant, who is only worth as much as he can work, in a perfidious bureaucratic system. Elif is a woman who ends up in an economic dictatorship, preferring utopian tendencies that distance her from the fangs of reality. Her daughter, Lily, has a different perspective, beyond her mother's stories, managing to understand the cruel truth and their precarious condition, with a cynicism specific to her age.

Text taken from Contributors.ro / author: Mircea Morariu

If it is true that, as Shakespeare said, theater should be the mirror of life, then there is no doubt that it has the obligation to be open to new themes, imposed by current events. Among them is that of the increasingly acute, and sometimes worrying, presence of artificial intelligence in our daily existence. 

The play, among other things, talks about exactly this involvement of robots, about the mixture of novelty, benefits and concerns implied by the intrusion in question. Hope never goes up in the elevator. presented for the first time in the country at the Sala Transylvania by the Theatre Queen Mary from Oradea. I say among other things because the author of the play, Simona Mihuțiu, an oncologist by profession, who is at the time of her debut in dramatic literature (at least in the representation of her productions in the field), has attached a few others to the main theme. Not a few at all. Like that of all kinds of difficulties that old age entails or that of loneliness. And they are extremely current.

Article taken from Contributors.ro / author: Mircea Morariu

I'll say it from the very beginning. Elif and the Rain from the Theater Queen Mary from Oradea, is far from a flawless show. Not everything we see on stage is perfectly valid and not absolutely original. There are obvious borrowings in the grammar of the staging both in terms of the directorial solutions related to the theme, the construction of the characters themselves (whose first appearances, with large, immense suitcases, cannot help but remind you of Silviu Purcărete's shows) and in terms of the sets and costumes, also from the same area. They are signed by Tania Gobejishvili. The frequent use of classic microphones, with stands, used to highlight dramatic situations or lines considered essential is not something very new either. The fashion, introduced into Romanian theater some time ago by Radu Afrim in his shows, has proliferated and is present in a consistent, perhaps even too consistent, number of productions.

Text taken from Contributors.ro / author: Mircea Morariu

In 2014, when in the offer of performances of an edition of the International Theatre Festival Interferences, organized by the Hungarian State Theatre in Cluj-Napoca and its director, Tompa Gábor, the show with the play appeared An enemy of the people by Henrik Ibsen, the name of German director Thomas Ostermeier was not at all unknown to the Romanian public.

Something was also known about Nora, and about HamletThe latter came to us on the occasion of an edition of the Festival Shakespeare  created by Emil Boroghină at the National Theatre Marin Sorescu from Craiova. It was also known that Ostermeier was passionate about Ibsen's dramatic literature. Which he staged in its entirety and to which he dedicated substantial pages in his book Theater and fear which would also appear in Romanian in 2016, in the collection Yorick  of Bucharest publishing houses NemiraThe 2024 reissue of the book would be complemented by the appearance of two other books dedicated to the director from Schaubühne, one that also appeared at Nemira  (Thomas Ostermeier's Theater), the other (Backstage Ostermeier) at the Cultural Foundation Camil PetrescuAlso in 2024, Ostermeier staged on the stage of the National Theatre IL Caragiale the play show Hedda Gabler.

Article taken from LiterNet.ro / author: Liviu Ornea

A couple mourns their four-year-old son who died in a stupid accident: the dog ran into the street, a young man tries to avoid it and kills the child who had run after the dog. No one is to blame. It happens. Fate. Eight months after the accident, the parents have not recovered. Each reacts differently. They become estranged. The wife almost cultivates her pain and refuses to communicate with her husband, her sister and mother, her friends who, even they, do not know how to react, she becomes aggressive, accuses everyone of not understanding her pain. The husband tries group therapy, rejected sine die by his wife and has a small affair. In the end, they decide to sell the house (the wife's idea). She tries, not to start all over again, but at least to learn to live again.

Text taken from Contributors.ro / author: Mircea Morariu

Like the other eight previous editions, the ninth PHYTO, that is, to Oradea International Theatre Festival, held between June 1-9, organized by the Theatre Queen Mary, had two sections. One with a competitive character, the second reserved for guest performances.

The first section, the one in which a significant number of theaters have entered productions in the competition, intends to preserve the connection with tradition. More precisely, with Short Theatre Week, a festival created in 1976, thanks to the collaboration between the management of the Oradea State Theatre at the time and that of the magazine Family.

Text taken from LiterNet.ro / author: Mihai Brezeanu

After a strong start with the new UNITER 2024 laureate Who killed my father? of the Metropolis Theatre (the award for best direction went to Andrei Măjeri), the 9th edition of the Oradea International Theatre Festival (FITO) scheduled, on the second day (June 2, 2024), a premiere of the hosts. The Iosif Vulcan troupe of the Regina Maria Theatre presented, on the stage of the magnificent Great Hall of the State Theatre, the country premiere of the musical Kid.

Text taken from Contributors.ro / author: Mircea Morariu

Theater Queen Mary from Oradea has recently enriched its repertoire with a new, good and exciting show called Rabbit Hole. It is based on a skillfully written play by the American David-Lindsay Abaire. Who, after being rewarded for it in 2007 with the prestigious Pulitzer (Abaire also received other awards), he turned it into a film script. A 2011 film that was released in our country under the rather uninspired title Awakening to reality. Film directed by John Cameron Mitchell and which brought Nicole Kidman, who was a perfect fit for the female lead role, a nomination for Oscar.

Text taken from Contributors.ro / author: Mircea Morariu

Under the title of a famous American film starring Jane Seymour, Christopher Plummer and Christopher Reeve, a film that miraculously arrived on Romanian screens in the suffocating, practically hopeless 1980s, the Theatre Queen Mary from Oradea offered its spectators the opportunity to see a performance of the play Almost, Maine of John Cariani.

I will not attempt to explain the reason for the change of title in the following. I will only note that the stories in the 8 modules of the show take place in an indefinite time, but the place where they are consumed is specified as clearly as possible. That is, Maine, a rather bizarre locality, with a society and social life that are not exactly organized, located where the map is pinned.

Text taken from ancazaharia.ro / author: Anca Zaharia

After my move from Brașov to Oradea, I didn't regret anything, but I often said that I missed theater, so I started the project of familiarizing myself with this world in the city where my new home is. As you know if you've read me before and as you're finding out now if you haven't, I share what I like and I think others might like it or, on the contrary, cause change in those whom it can put, from the comfortable seat in the hall, in not-so-comfortable positions, with the potential to generate some reflections as a glimmer of hope for self-education and tolerance. 

Because it seems vital to me that we draw some conclusions that will make us at least a little more decent people, not just remain passive and giddy consumers of any cultural, artistic or entertainment product. If you want and can, or at least want to be able to, you have something useful to learn from Las Fierbinți (which Diana, my colleague from GOLAN Magazine, wrote about, here) and from some show with love islands or parent swaps. Okay, for this you need some skills that we don't really learn in the traditional educational environment, because God forbid the child interprets something according to his own mind and doesn't babble the eternal comments learned by heart from grandma's collection of comments.

Text taken from bookhub.ro / author: Oana Cosma

In 1973, even for the French, homosexual concubinage was a taboo subject. Jean Poiret, author The cage of the mad he knew this when he took over the idea from 1966 of a British man and developed it in an original way in his own play; he himself played one of the two homosexuals (Georges, the director of the cabaret shows with transvestites at the nightclub he owned with his partner for more than a decade). Even today, in 2023, the subject is not approached openly, lightly, not even in communities where homosexuals exist. Accepting sexual minorities represents a great challenge for many of us, but members of this minority also struggle with their own prejudices: the shame of being part of a "blamed" minority, the doubt that torments some of them their whole lives: are they really homosexual or not?; the precariousness and uncertainty of a stable daily life generate real dramas among them. Jean Poiret, as a man of the theater, a consummate artist, did not set out to play the moralizing wolf, but simply to bring a sensitive subject before the audience, in a constructive, funny, comical manner. I think the result surprised even Poiret himself: The cage of fools It is performed in many countries, over and over again, perhaps because, being so well written, it allows the lines to be adapted according to the specifics of the country or place where it is performed, as well as the names and features of some of the characters.