Text taken from agenda.liternet.ro / author: Răzvan Rocaș

The beginning of the current season (2022-2023) would bring Gabriel Sandu to the Regina Maria Theater as part of the "a.LIVE" project, an initiative implemented together with the FITO Cultural Foundation. Known for his dramatic texts: My father, the priest (staged at the National Theatre in Târgu Mureș and at the Apollo 111 Theatre), forgot (mounted at POINT, Bucharest) or Enmity v.0.2. There's something healing about giving people an object of their hatred (staged at Teatrelli) – for the last 2 and also directing the performances – Gabriel Sandu offers the Oradea audience an intimate and moving foray into the depths of the concept of loss, be it interpersonal or intrapersonal. Despite such a pressing theme, Luxury manages to remain in a naive register, in which situations, characters and circumstances intertwine and form a plausible image of realities that most often end up creating internal mechanisms and in relation to others much deeper than we could conceive. These resources then become the main way in which we manage to relate, react and act in social circumstances, but they are also the limitations that, voluntarily or involuntarily, we impose on ourselves.

The show is built around four characters who, at some point in their lives, suffered a decisive loss, but despite this, each of them benefits from a chance to build a new beginning, a new life, far from the traumas of the past. Looking from this perspective, the four can be considered privileged. Their common point, the one that brings them together, is the NGO Binele te szulceste – a name that carries a double valence, defining the path and consequences with which the protagonists are chosen: on the one hand, in an optimistic key, which indicates the confluence of circumstances through which the characters can rebuild their lives despite the reminiscences of the past; on the other hand, in an ironic note, indicating an external effort for them to overcome their own condition in order to rise to another, better level.

Functioning and replicating the original hypostases, four well-defined typologies are outlined both through Gabriel Sandu's writing and stage direction, as well as through the performances of the four actors, their choice being one of the show's strong points:

Lavinia – in a powerful and precise interpretation by Anda Tămășanu – the leader of the NGO Binele te ștășește, is the typology of the leader and the savior, who of all the characters understands best what it means to be different and how this difference can bring with it the hostility of others. The suffering he hides, which he stores in acts of charity comes from an emotional loss, through the disappearance of a woman he had fallen in love with. However, we notice that this fervor with which he tries to fight for a better world goes beyond empathy towards people in need, ending up fighting for the cause itself, being the only way he can stop his intrinsic war.

Cristin – in a jovial and natural interpretation by Giorgiana Coman – is faithful to her own drama, not having or refusing to have the power to change her own life, waiting for others to act for and on her behalf, and even to deal with the unwanted consequences of misunderstood choices. The victim mentality she adopts has ramifications in her early childhood, when she was harassed by her step-grandfather, and once her grandmother finds out, she is only half-justified. Practically devoid of a reference point by which she can guide her own life, at 17 she ends up having two children and an almost pathological need to depend on someone else, which is also the reason why she loses custody of the children to her ex-husband.

Cristiana – in a sincere and believable interpretation by Eugen Neag – a member of the NGO, he is the one who tries to channel his energy for the benefit of others to the detriment of his personal needs, as a result of a failed juvenile attempt to keep his family together and as close to him as possible, seeking to please his parents as much as possible, out of fear of abandonment and loneliness. These effects that follow him in his adult life, materialize through an acute need for closeness and belonging.

Oles – in the sensitive and candid interpretation of Carina Bunea – is the type of addict, who values her decisions by subordinating them to what others choose for her. Arriving in the country as a result of the war, she remains, in the first phase, in a state of expectation for the one who would come, take her and take her to a safe place. The little one's waiting for her shepherd... the arrival of someone, however, becomes a permanent postponement. The great loss that Olesia feels is at the moment of the death of her grandmother, the one who represents the immutable point of her life, the guiding beacon, her pain being doubled by the absolute necessity to survive, to flee her own country and to take shelter in the hope of a better life, which, however, refuses to show itself.