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).

For those more familiar with the piece Richard III, it is, from the Lancaster team, the former Queen Margaret (widow of the former King Henry VI) and Lady Anne (daughter-in-law of Henry VI, herself a widow), versus, from the York team, the dying King Edward IV, his brothers Clarence (actually George, Duke of Clarence) and the future King Richard III (previously Duke of Gloucester) and their mother, the Duchess of York. From a third branch, that of the Woodville family, it is important to mention Queen Elizabeth, wife of King Edward IV. And there is, of course, the Duke of Richmond, grandson of the former King Henry VI, the one who will succeed Richard III (whom he kills) to become King Henry VII.

All this and much more is to be found out (for those, like me, to whom the 3 parts of Henry IV are somewhat foreign to them) during the Măjeran-Orădean performance through short episodes introduced by the word "Chronicle" and continued through audio recordings. The aforementioned insertions, as well as the usual simplification of the text of Richard III (Shakespeare's second longest play is almost never staged in its entirety), forms the stage version in Oradea and is written by the Cluj-Napoca playwright Alexandra Felseghi and Andrei Măjeri.

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Richard's head popping out from under the curtain. Petre Ghimbășan delivering his first monologue with his head thrown back, a symbol of the upside-down world. Much of Felseghi & Măjeri's approach to convincingly & enticingly combine the musicality of the language of the time & the vocabulary of today & the semantics unfettered by eras is based on Ghimbășan's excellent diction and flawless control of his speech. The other eight actors glimpse each other for a moment through the folds of the curtain. Their bodies forming a pyramid, their eyes looking with amazement and amusement at Richard and the stalls.

A few seconds earlier, Luca Bran (the 10-year-old kid who debuted on the big stage in Oradea last year, in The Jungle Book, and later made a sensation on the first night of the Oradea International Theatre Festival (FITO) 2024, in the premiere of the Regina Maria Theatre with Kid, directed by Imre Halasi) places his pillow on the proscenium and then lays his head on the pillow. He is Richmond, the one who will dream of the show that is about to begin, the one who, in the end, will place two horses next to the pillow (one white and one red, of course), then kill Richard and end the show.

A few seconds earlier, the audience takes their seats in the dimly lit hall, in warm tones, as if the theater were a closed-circuit nightclub. From somewhere beyond the curtain, fierce house music rhythms can be heard (musical illustration: Andrei Măjeri), to whose chords the actors will dance (choreography: Hunor Varga) in several parts throughout the show.

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The curtain rises. The spectators in the stalls look up at the set imagined by set designer Adrian Balcău. Like Richard, we don't have access to the steps that keep going up. We can only look at them and imagine what it would be like to climb them, what it would be like to break away from where we are to a higher place.

Richard / Petre Ghimbășan, like us, remains for most of the show, somewhere down below (at the foot of the Tower of London, as they say, far from the heights that often transform grandeur into a tomb antechamber). Maybe that's why he takes us as accomplices and tells us everything he's going to do. He feels, he knows that we're on the same level, that we'll listen to him, that we'll understand him, that we won't stop him (for a while, I thought about the title Sympathy for the Richard). Curious, neither Richard / Csongor Zsolt Nagy (from Richard III staged by István Albu in December 2024 with the Harag György Troupe of the Northern Theatre Satu Mare) was not allowed to climb to the upper floors of the scaffolding-set made by Erika Márton. He does so, in the end, when he gains, for a few moments, supreme power.

For Richard, the geographical disadvantage turns into a clothing advantage. Everyone is in white and, especially, black, except for him, who enjoys the privilege called blue socks (counter-matched to black-and-white, gaiter-style shoes; costumes: the same Adrian Balcău). A funny counterpoint, meant to relax any tense points, but also an echo of the greatness (the future King Richard III's cloak is colored in the same intense, blinding blue) and decadence (the collar of Richmond, the future King Henry VII, is, you guessed it, blue) that will follow.

Did I say funny counterpoint? It's full of it. Richard III Măjeri's own. For example, the microwave oven where Buckingham (a Răzvan Vicoveanu in great form) heats Richard's milk, night after night. The milk is served from probe-type glasses, colored white and actually filled with water (theatrical convention). At a certain moment, the door of a cupboard opens and we can admire a dozen identical glasses (Măjeri's convention of awakening Hitchcock-esque anguish in the spectators seeing poisons everywhere).

After tasting the liquor, Richard wraps himself in the blanket and falls asleep in the bed hosted by one of the sections of the set with a spherical base that rotates dozens of times on the turntable (without this disturbing in any way, on the contrary, the rotational movement has something both hypnotic and stimulating in it, of time that always passes quickly, always in a circle). Lady Anne will also end up in that bed, to whom Alina Leonte gives, in her relationship with Richard, a type of warmth, candor, closeness that is even a counterpoint that has not been seen in the famous Shakespearean text. The extraordinary vocal qualities of the actress are highlighted (musical preparation: Ovidiu Iloc) by the songs with which Lady Anne weaves her strange web around the one who will devour her/us. Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again, Because a vision softly creeping, Left its seeds while I was sleeping.

But what about this Richard? What is he, who is he? A child of the stature of Richmond's interpreter? An adult who never left the mind of childhood (perhaps in order not to fulfill the curse of his mother, the Duchess of York, to whom Ioana Dragoș Gajdó gives an aura of ancient tragedian)? An adult visited uninterruptedly by childhood traumas? An adult from the lineage of an anti-hero of Psycho (I'm talking about Hitchcock) who uses the balance between maturity and childhood with terrible bravery to disguise his terrible deeds?

By one I am an example., the murder of Clarence (Richard Balint) is performed, in the case of the Oradea version, by Richard and Buckingham themselves, whose faces are initially hidden by two huge white stockings reminiscent of a Funny Games with which Michael Haneke once frightened Cannes and, in general, the entire Western-bourgeois civilization possessing illusions regarding the good upbringing of the children who will someday populate the world. Later, the character Tyrrell will be completely absent and the murder of the two sons of the late King Edward IV will happen like that, simply, as a given, as a game. Speaking of the two sons, Robert Balint alone plays both of them, quickly and skillfully changing the clothing elements specific to each of them in the unseen area of the set, switching with precision and justice between two versions of adolescence that combine both elements from Shakespearean times and strictly contemporary objects and attitudes.

The teenager's white helmets will end up on the head of King Richard III, alongside the much-loved and somewhat clichéd crown. This oscillation between past and present, between royal and humble, between solemn and banal is a wonderful craft mastered both at the dramaturgical level (Felseghi & Măjeri), as well as at the scenographic level (Adrian Balcău), sound (original music: Adrian Piciorea) and visual (lighting design: Sabina Reus, video design: Andrei Cozlac). The combination of spotlights - video - music, sometimes with stage smoke as an auxiliary component, forms a self-contained character who tells his own version of the stories, parables, and bugs placed on stage.

In a way, the strangeness of this non-verbal mix of lights, images (projected on a huge white screen, which hangs there, the viewer's imagination places the place where the bodies of those destined to never come down from the The Tower of London) and sounds come to emphasize the entire textual approach of the duo Felseghi – Mąjeri who, through the chronicles brought down from Henry VI, invites us to judge with better knowledge the context in which Richard III was as he was. For example, in the performance of the Regina Maria Theatre in Oradea, the terrible former Queen Margret (Corina Cernea) dilutes her aura of prophet of misfortunes to come in the sauce of revelations regarding her own crimes, including infanticide, committed years ago. For example, in the Oradea production, Clarence (Richard Balint) is a drunkard whose alcohol has dulled any sense of reality, the dying King Edward IV (Richard Balint) is a senile old man, and the King who had been dead for a while, Henry IV (Richard Balint), actually dreams of being a shepherd (ah, the scene of the andrels!) and hands over the reins of the kingdom and of his own life to the arms of his wife, the aforementioned former Queen Margret).

Parenthesis: Richard Balint ticks off another character, that of the Cardinal (the only one who, based on cherry red & red, breaks the black & white clothing chromaticism) with a touch of blue) that Richard sends after strawberries, and manages, with the gallery of these 4 interpreted characters, to achieve the performance of embodying, from a few lines, grimaces and gestures, 4 characters so close and yet so fundamentally different. The actor's white hair and his eternally playful air are trademarks of Richard III by Măjeri! Closed parenthesis.

This, then, is the context. And let's enrich it even more! Vicoveanu's Buckingham (Bucky, actually) has something eternally unexpected, slippery, surprising, playfully dark. The suggestion threesome between him, Richard and Lady Anne, the allusions to a gay relationship with Cosmin Petruț's Hastings (Hasty, see well), his solitary choreographic passages are just some of the attributes of a character that Măjeri probably thought of as a joker next to the joker Richard.

The two jokers in the square address us directly in the exceptional scene of the people's persuasion / by the people in the coronation of Richard. Shakespeare's characters are not the maneuvering table, but we, the characters of the electoral reality of 2024-2025. On stage, Richard disguised as a monk, on the screen, a white lamb, waiting, through the air, for words that announce to us that Hastings was killed in order to protect peace (this supreme value in the name of which wars have always been fought!).

Whether he is a child, an adult, an adult disguised as a child, Ghimbășan's Richard (what a tonic revelation this actor is, whom Măjeri had the smartness to give such confidence in!) seems to have only one true rival. A woman. Not Margaret, not Lady Anne. The entire dramaturgical scenario already evoked and the presence, both fragile and statuesque, of Denisa Irina Vlad, propels Elisabeth to the forefront. The scene / Her confrontation with Richard (how much I wish you could see the same moment in Richard III from the Timișoara National, directed by Radu Iacoban, with Claudia Ieremia and Matei Chioariu in the respective roles, with the premiere just a week before the Oradea one!) risks making history (also) thanks to the projections that depict the queen-actress aging AI-accelerated as the mad king reveals his plan regarding Elisabeth's daughter.

In a way, the accelerated disfigurement of the one who understands the horror of the facts, of the one who manages to transgress the cacophony, the din, the house-real, the duplication, the flight from reality that seems to dominate the world that Richard climbs into, is the mirror that Măjeri and his band of artists hold up before the man living in the political and social year 2025. In our ears, before our eyes, horrors of the kind attributed to Richard are to be seen. We hear, see or disappear as if we never existed!