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.

And with all this, Elif and the Rain It seems to me to be an important show because it means a convincing debut on a professional stage of the young Alex Ianăși, a graduate of the Theater Directing courses at UNATC. Which proposes a lively, dynamic theater show, sometimes even harsh, but harsh with measure, balanced, characterized by the coherence and force of the demonstration (the noun demonstration has in this case nothing in common with the relative adjective demonstrative) and by a remarkable power of persuasion of the director in relation to all the components of the cast. Which it is visible that he knew how to lead well, transforming them into allies. A fact that is by no means a small thing. Alex Ianăși also had notable collaborators in the person of the scenographer, Tania Gobejishvili, well valued for the light design created by Vlad Lăzărescu, and in that of the composer of the stage music, Ovidiu Iloc.

For his first show as a graduate director, Alex Ianăși opted for the text of a young British playwright named Sami Ibrahim. Who probably comes, at least that's how the resonance of the name lets us understand, from a family of immigrants. A statement by the playwright reproduced in the auditorium notebook (written by Florina Dometi, Ramona Nemeș and Răzvan Rocaș) seems significant to me, indicating, I think, a point of convergence between the author of the text and the director. "As for what I write, I'm not interested in writing stories where I have a clear answer. I'm always attracted to stories where there is a question or some kind of knot that I can't untie at the center of it.".

The story that Sami Ibrahim now tells us through the performance directed by Alex Ianăși is that of an immigrant. The story is far from being singular. It is probably inspired by the resurgence of the migration phenomenon, after the failure of what was called Arab Spring, but also after other human cataclysms that have marked the world in recent years. We do not know exactly which country Elif comes from, we only know that she wanted to dig up a bloody dictatorship regime that killed her grandfather. We do not even know the name of the country in which the woman with an exceptional will tries to make a living. Nuanced in the show by Anda Tămășanu who (re) proves on this occasion that she is a strong actress. The moment of the monologue seemed to me to be a completely remarkable one. We only know that the country of asylum mimics hospitality, respect for the right to free movement of people and the right to work. However, putting into operation a very well-regulated bureaucratic self-protection mechanism that Alex Ianăși knows how to highlight, without relying on primary realism. He does so, pertinently emphasizing both the grotesque (the depiction of the row of recorders played convincingly by Corina Cernea, Angela Tanko, Giorgiana Coman, Mihaela Gherdan contributes to this), and the polychromatic falsehood (visible in the way in which Ioana Dragoș Gajdó, George Dometi, Denisa Irina Vlad and Eugen Neag concretize their characters), and the resignation and despair of the postulants (I note the humanity with which Sorin Ionescu enriches his character).

 In accordance with the playwright's wishes, the story is explicit in nature, with multiple narrators. From a certain point on, the burden of the story falls on the actress Carina Bunea, who plays Elif's loving and rebellious daughter. The theater-within-the-theater formula is also discreetly used. Some of the actors become characters before our eyes.

Alex Ianăși is entering the profession with a bang. I wish him continued success.