stage manager: Răzvan Pojonie
asistent de regie tehnică: Vlad Negrea
lighting technicians: Jenel Moldovan, Mădălina Mânzat, Alexandru Corpodean
sound technician: Vasile Crăciun
prompter: Ana Maria Moldovan, Alina Forna
We do not enjoy walks down the dark memory lanes of our history, but art will not let us forget. The conjured portraits of torturers, informants, corrupt politicians, cowardly intellectuals, Bovaresque and deceitful women confront us with the shadows and weaknesses of the human soul, allowing for few rays of light and hope. The characters in Marin Preda's famous novel spin out on stage into a vortex of consciences fighting for survival. Some walk the path of compromise; others shut their eyes tight and refuse to make judgements; while some step on dead bodies, others crawl through prison cells, rejecting a reality that is utterly unacceptable from a human point of view. Should we live the lie in order to be happy, yet morally crippled, or to break the circles of external and internal imprisonment through the ultimate act of liberation? The most beloved of earthlings does not have a choice.
Ticket prices:
60 lei, 50 lei, 40 lei, 30 lei, 20 lei, 10 lei (depending on the seat location);
10 lei (discounts for pupils and students); 20 lei, 15 lei (discounts for pensioners).
(...) This adaptation [of The Earth's Most Beloved Son] is, naturally, a partial one, in that Victor Petrini's entire history - with his wife, Matilda, whom he breaks up with, and with his illusory lover, Suzy - is inserted between scenes of loneliness and suffering in his prison cell or during interrogations, thus eliminating certain situations from the book.
Nicolae Prelipceanu, Un roman pe scenă / A Novel on Stage, in Teatrul azi no. 12/2019
The director has designed the show to reflect some of the scenes in the book so precisely, without exaggerating their vulgarity, cruelty or brutality, proving that the main theme - communism and all of its horrors - can still be fascinating after 1989.
Tudor Lucanu manages to synthesise the most significant elements of Preda's novel in a three-hour show. He explains the title and the meaning of this complex tragedy experienced by the young university assistant Victor Petrini, whose career fails and whose life collapses. It is a sentimental and a professional tragedy, but it is also the tragedy of human nature itself (...) The show is dynamic, forceful and authentic, all of which is favoured and enhanced by the kinetic and dynamic set designed by Cristian Rusu.
Almost all of the actors have multiple roles, but everything is well-thought, well-assigned, calculated. It must be said that the show has a natural flow or rhythm, and the scenes are believable (...) Cynicism, the secret police, torture, "black suits", humiliation, "spy-ology and arrest-ology", a conversation between dummy-portraits, nightmares, anguish - all these elements are captured through various stylistic means, without betraying the book's structure and aiming for a plausible sort of osmosis (...) A successful, rich, elaborate show.
Alexandru Jurcan, Spectacolul „celui mai iubit"... / The show of the "most beloved" ... in the magazine Tribuna, no. 403, 16-30 June 2019
The director Tudor Lucanu has proven that his greatest talent is "the sweet classical style", that he is a playwright with a vision and that he is able to harness the energy of the entire team, leading the actors in a confident manner and producing yet another successful show at the National Theatre of Cluj.