text taken from bookhub.ro / author: Gabriel Nicolae (CN "Mihai Eminescu" Buzău)

The last show of the 12th edition of the Young Theatre Festival proved brilliant through the director's vision and the actors' performances, through the scenery and costumes. IL Caragiale's play, the director proves to us Vlad Trifas, is not dated. It can be brought without being essentially modified, with ingenuity, at the level of the message, into the deepest topicality.

In Of the carnival the action takes place in the slums. People have no high concerns, going to the barbershop is already socializing, and attending balls is inevitable. Love is a fad, in fact, the ultimate fad, which justifies the agitation caused by infidelity. A smoke from the barbecue envelops the hall some time before the barbecue itself, with the mititei prepared from meats of obscure origin (let's not say more!), appears on the scene itself, supervised by the waiter who, after putting on the "mondir", becomes a commissioner.

The set design elements and costumes preserve the air of an era that we only know from archive images.

Attached to the ceiling, a ladder can be moved depending on the situation. The ladder on which the actors ascend and descend is the ideal solution to achieve the effect of widening the stage space. The walls cover, as much as possible, the immoral life of people who consume extraordinary energies for derisory reasons, not to mention promiscuity. A lot of space remains visible, the transparent walls of Nae Girimea's barbershop inviting the audience to initiate themselves into problems that are normally related to intimidation. The barbershop becomes, when the scenery changes, a carnival place, returning for the last part of the show to the barbershop.

Titu Maiorescu observes that in Caragiale's comedies the acting scores have a double register: comic and tragic. The situational comic becomes the main source of hilarious situations. But the tragic dimension, in thick strokes, also creates comic effects. Women and men suffer equally when they are "translated" into love. This suffering shouted out loud, without any discretion, transformed into promises of revenge becomes ridiculous, not being internalized at all.

The actors' performance is impressive in terms of dedication and talent. The actors of the "Regina Maria" Theater in Oradea are very good, managing to embody characters that you can easily see transcending eras, reaching timelessness.

The ending is very successful, with those slow movements of the actors, suggesting an entry into timelessness, a floating through the centuries, until the present day, when the slum has expanded its boundaries so much that a precise delimitation is no longer possible. Vulgarization has become a phenomenon, against the backdrop of an immorality accepted as the norm.

A strong point of the director's vision is, indisputably, the ratio between implicit and explicit. The viewer's ability to understand what is not directly said is tested, an interesting pact with the audience.