Bucharest Calling by Peca Stefan gets great reviews in New York City
August 2007
Lost in Bucharest
by Valerie Work
Bucharest Calling (Fringe Festival) reviewed August 11, 2007
What does it mean to come of age in a country where the past weighs heavily on the present, making the future a perpetually surprising concept?
Bucharest Calling attempts, without directly discussing Romanian history, to provide the audience with a sense of what it is like to be a young person living in Bucharest today and wrestling with the legacies of the country's communist past. The city's atmosphere is invoked not only through the actors' performances but also by projected images of indoor and outdoor spaces in Bucharest, music, sound effects, and film.
Five characters—a clubber girl, a prostitute, her pimp, a radio show host, and an illegal car racer—chase dreams they find difficult to define, and more difficult to realize. Their lives intertwine in increasingly complex ways, and as the plot progresses, each in turn encourages and frustrates the desires of the other characters. Even for an American who has never visited Romania or any part of Eastern Europe, their situations and decisions are convincing and inspire empathy.
The five actors—Laurentiu Banescu, Katia Pascarlu, Daniel Popa, Isabela Neamtu, and Cosmin Selesi—give intense, nuanced performances. Peca Stefan's script has been well translated from Romanian into English and is honest, poetic, and fierce. Ana Margineanu has done an excellent job coordinating both the actors' work and the piece's design elements into a coherent production. At times, particularly in the middle, the pacing seems a little slow, but this relatively minor flaw may even out in subsequent performances.
The major design feature is the projection of hand-painted, animation-like images onto a screen located behind the stage platform. The images provide easy transitions between scenes and locations and assist in evoking Bucharest. The music, often ostensibly a component of Alex's radio show, is catchy and adds much to the strong sense of atmosphere. Through the device of the radio show, this production features one of the most inventive pre-show announcement segments this viewer has seen.
A fully realized staging of an innovative play, Bucharest Calling is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys quality Off-Off-Broadway theater.
Note: This production is part of the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival.
Bucharest Calling
reviewed by Michael Criscuolo
Aug 16, 2007
Everyone in playwright Peca Stefan's Bucharest Calling needs to make big changes. Andrei, a listless nomad who races cars illegally, is stuck in a rut of melancholy and self-pity. Katia, a young club kid, yearns to escape the oppressive responsibility of caring for her sick, bedridden mother. Julia, an aspiring actress, prostitutes herself (literally) in the hope that her pimp, Pall Mall, will come through on his long-standing promise to hook her up with some show biz connections. Alex, a nighttime radio DJ, is on the verge of cancellation. Despite the characters's hopes for positive change, there's a certain part of them that feels inherently destined to fail. After all, they live in Bucharest, which they all view as a dead-end town and an automatic three strikes against them. How do they find success in a world that is seemingly designed for failure? That's the intriguing premise of Stefan's fine new play.
The author weaves a tale ruled by coincidence and fate as his five characters come into contact with each other in seemingly random fashion: Andrei nearly runs Katia over, then gives her a ride home; Julia calls into Alex's radio show, and gets invited to the station. We soon learn that Katia and Julia are siblings, as are Andrei and Alex, and both pairs have checkered histories with each other. When Pall Mall finally encounters Katia, it becomes clear that none of these meetings has been by chance. All of these characters are historically connected, whether they know it or not, and Bucharest Calling gives them all a shot at what one of them calls "a second chance...a clean slate."
Stefan handles the themes of his play—freedom and escape; change and the opportunity to make things right—as effortlessly as he juggles his characters' convergent storylines. Their rueful outlook on life is expressed eloquently in sentiments like "We could both regain meaning" (Andrei to Katia) and "The one thing you can never escape is the truth in you—and you know it" (Alex to his listeners). Best of all is a closing voiceover in which one of the characters likens themselves to Bucharest: "Paralyzed and alive. Old before its time. Worn out."
Director Ana Margineanu is equally comfortable with Bucharest Calling's tricky brand of pathos, and avoids the all-too-easy trap of wallowing in it. She keeps the play relatively light and matter-of-fact, leaving the audience to endow it with meaning and heft (even though it has plenty of both already).
The five-person cast is marvelous, with standout performances coming from Isabela Neamtu as Julia and Daniel Popa as Alex. They both make the most of the play's gallows-humor sensibility. Laurentiu Banescu and Katia Pascariu have some very funny and touching moments as Andrei and Katia, respectively, and Cosmin Selesi rounds the group out with an increasingly unhinged turn as Pall Mall.
Romania's MONDAY Theatre, the company responsible for Bucharest Calling, represents themselves impressively with this well-done production. I recommend paying these Eastern European visitors a call and showing them some All-American love.
Written/created by: Peca Stefan
Directed by Ana Margineanu
Presented by Monday Theatre @ Green Hours
Theater | New York International Fringe Festival
Theater’s Alternative Universe
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
Published: August 18, 2007
“Consuming Passions” is so whimsical that its insights seem almost accidental. Some of the songs have been revived and readapted from early-20th-century musicals, and they possess both wisdom and bite, making the production among the festival’s most winning history lessons.
“Bucharest Calling,” a drama about young people confronting limited opportunity in the post-Communist world, easily qualifies as another. Written by Peca Stefan and directed by Ana Margineanu (Romanians who are also behind a second offering at the festival, “The Sunshine Play”), the production makes excellent use of its spare surroundings.
Even the most professional efforts, like “Consuming Passions,” can feel diminished in the shabby setting of the Fringe’s performance spaces. But the bleak theater in which “Bucharest” is set serves it well, supplementing the play’s mood of despondence and emotional claustrophobia. The actors work simply, with a few chairs and grim images of Bucharest streets projected on a screen behind them.
“Bucharest Calling” reminds us that the Fringe is international in its scope. I would venture to guess that this prompts some people to narrow the field by winnowing their choices to foreign works. This is an entirely reasonable approach, though anyone taking it should know that this year it will require you to seriously consider “Joan of ArPpo,” a tragicomic parable of contemporary life, performed by a Swiss clown.
Bucharest Calling
August 13, 2007
By Irene Backalenick
A gifted young company from Romania is bringing two pieces to the Fringe Festival: Bucharest Calling and The Sunshine Play. The former is the initial offering and seems to present the seamy underside of Bucharest life in the post-Communist era. But one soon realizes these are not the city's criminals (though a prostitute and pimp are on hand) but ordinary people just trying to get through the day. Ultimately, the message comes across: Bucharest, like the mother in the play, is paralyzed and dying — but dying with a smile.
The five actors interact with believable spontaneity as romances rise and fall and brothers and sisters connect and disconnect. The actors' clear English is enhanced by appealing Romanian accents. Under Ana Margineanu's astute direction, the story plays out in a series of short staccato scenes enhanced by appropriate slides and videos. Bucharest Calling brings a fresh, welcome voice to the festival.
Presented by Monday Theatre @ Green Hours and ArCub as part of the New York International Fringe Festival
at the Lafayette Street Theatre, 45 Bleecker St., NYC.
Aug. 11-19. Remaining performances: Tue., Aug. 14, 3 p.m.; Thu., Aug. 16, 7 p.m.; Fri., Aug. 18, 10 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 19, noon.
(212) 279-4888 or (888) 374-6436 or www.fringenyc.org.
Bucharest Calling @ Theatres at 45 Bleecker, Lafayette Street Theatre
In Peca Stefan's jaggedly episodic Bucharest Calling, melancholy and desperation haunt the five characters whose lives intersect with coincidences worthy of Dickens and irony that brings to mind O. Henry. From the deejay (Daniel Popa) trying to hold onto his job to the actress (Isabela Neamtu) with dreams of stardom in the U.S., all of Stefan's characters attempt to find some modicum of happiness in a world that the deejay continually likens to an airplane that somehow can't take off. While Ana Margineanu's direction proves fitful and perhaps a bit too leisurely, "Bucharest" is beautifully played. Popa and Neamtu give richly emotional performances as Stefan's thirtysomething characters, while Katia Pascarlu and Laurentiu Banescu charm as a younger pair of misfit lovers. Cosmin Selesi, as a one-time corporate bigwig, provides an oily counterpoint of abject hopelessness to the others’ aspirations in this often affecting glimpse into life in the post-Soviet Romanian world.
-- Andy Propst