Text author: Claudiu Groza
Taken from tribuna-magazine.com

Probably any history of theater made during the "pandemic", as it will be called in years to come, will have to record – as a piquancy or relevant element – some of the artistic/technical solutions found by artists for their creations. A surprising variety, as we will soon see.

For his staging of Alan Ayckbourn's The Snake in the Grass at the "Regina Maria" Theatre in Oradea, Sebastian Lupu has resorted to a marking of sanitary convention: the show is performed with strict observance of social distancing. The three actresses play three meters apart, with a discreet but visible minuet of permanent spatial reconfiguration, but the illusion/sensation of their proximity to the point of touching is created through a skillful video montage (Ovi D. Pop). The show has been broadcast on YouTube several times since its premiere, being performed with an empty hall, obviously. The convention is also present as a precise stage sign, through the central circular cordon, with yellow strips on which the code of the new influenza virus is written, much like in the investigations in detective films.

An extratextual visual referent, but one that somehow fits the psychological thriller atmosphere of the play. Ayckbourn is a prolific author, with over 70 texts of all genres; his boulevard comedy Everything is Relative (1965) is being played at Nottara. The Snake in the Grass is a fairly recent text, from 2002, which probes, in a quasi-detective manner, the reunion of two sisters with a childhood tormented by a tyrannical and abusive father. Upon their father's death, they meet again to share the inheritance. But an emotional reconciliation, as stories like this would assume, does not take place. Instead, an unexpected mix of pseudo-plots, blackmail and manipulation unfolds, with a laughable and surprising ending.

As a director, Sebastian Lupu knew how to rely on and emphasize certain notes of the plot, through the three protagonists. Their characters are denoted by specific attitudes or behaviors, but partially deceptive. Annabel, the sister who has long left home, has in Angela Tanko an interpreter who nuances the intimate schizophrenia of the character, apparently detached from the traumatic past, trying to preserve the allure of a refined woman of the world, but still sensitive to any stimulus of memory. Annabel has a heart condition and this weakness now makes her all the more vulnerable. Alice, the father's nurse, is played by Anda Tămășanu as an emotionally immature person, unbalanced-enthusiastic but artisan of a blackmail (false, we will find out) that she leads with a kind of happy hysteria. It will turn out in the end that it is precisely this way of being that turns her into the naive victim of the other sister, Miriam. Mirela Lupu makes Miriam a heroine with an impressive range of psycho-emotional states, from that of a neurotic/psychotic character to that of a mature, cynical woman, who dryly admits her crime ("- Did you push him down the stairs? - Just a little bit...") and that of an entity dependent on the family/familiar environment, the only thing that can preserve her emotional comfort. Three actresses with three distinct personalities, controlling their scores well. I would have liked, perhaps, as a nuance, a more diverse type of reaction to the tensions of the plot - all three went, under the influence of the director, perhaps, on a very acute, extroverted register. Also as a small downside, I noticed, in places, an excess of realistic acting, that is, redundant, which should have been censored by the director, not encouraged.

Beyond these detailed observations, I must note the good articulation of Oana Cernea's stage space, with simple decorative elements and a painted background very suitable for the ensemble - the central element remaining the pandemic circle, which somehow also figured the symbolic distance between the characters, and Romeo Rîmbu's original music, which organically slides from symphonic composition to Broadway soundtrack, with an excellent leitmotif for a psychological thriller.

I also note the successful sequence of the dialogue between the two sisters, with a diversity of states, moods, current regressions, confrontations and mutual affection, which actually embodies the hard core of the relationship, that of alienation neutralized only by shared trauma, and the sharp ending – in its own way – which gives a counterpoint of black humor to the show.

The Snake in the Grass is an honest and well-made theatrical endeavor, relevant especially in the way it can build a show that involves closeness and interaction through the very absence of them (the rehearsals were done on Zoom). I'm curious about its impact with an audience in the theater.