ZENOBIA based on Gellu Naum’s novel opens on Sunday 13 March at 7pm, in "Euphorion" Studio. Script and direction: Mona Marian, set design: Eugenia Tărăşescu-Jianu, music by Corina Sîrbu. Cast: Naum - Cornel Răileanu; Young Naum - Cristian Rigman; Zenobia - Romina Merei; Sima, The railroad clerk, A father - Petre Băcioiu; Iason - Anca Hanu; Dragoş - Radu Lărgeanu; Constantin - Cristian Grosu; Petru - Miron Maxim; Naum’s mother, Maria’s mother - Maria Munteanu; Zoe-Olga, Naum’s sister - Eva Crişan; Gerda, The dead Auntie Linica - Elena Ivanca; Maria, Jeni Pop - Angelica Nicoară; Irina, The young man with a violin - Silvius Iorga.
Monica Lovinescu writes about Zenobia the following: „A poem - and, maybe, even more so, a pohem by Gellu Naum - can not be described. This book of quest (with the meaning of «quête»), of initiation, of malefic or benefic signs issued by different objects, of laborious deciphering of hidden meanings, capable to remediate the nonsense of our existential misery, would suffer more than others if its actions were to be narrated, as these actions are only apparent. Enough said, using the words of the author, that the duty of Zenobia and of the narrator-author is "to keep alive the love in the world". A duty which seems to be easy to bear as long as the two are hidden in a tree hollow, among swamps, but which becomes impossible in the city where the narrator wonders along an endless Kafka like corridor, in the quest of what he has already found and will only be able to find it again after returning to the swamps, a place which seems to emanate primordial."
There is a surrealist air in this book, in André Breton’s definition, as a point in which "the up and the down, the life and the death, the real and the imaginary seize to be perceived contradictorily", as the story is a mix of onoric-mithologic visions, through which the image of Zenobia, the embodiment of the "female canon", dominates, while completing the being of the man.
A press conference will be held on this occasion on Friday 11 March at 2pm, on the second floor foyer for Cluj-Napoca National Theatre.
