Two love stories

Synopsis

The show Two Love Stories is an exceptional comedy, built on the diptych of the one-act farces The Proposal and The Bear, written by A.P. Chekhov. In The Proposal, the absurd dispute between Ivan (Claudiu Bleonț), a decrepit old man who has come to propose to his neighbor Natalia (Cerasela Iosifescu), becomes the central motif of a fight between the deaf: the heroes want love in exchange for property. It turns out to be the other way around. Natalia is an old maid, fierce in defending the family property. Violently rejected, Ivan does not let himself be outdone, and from this conflict the ridiculous situation arises, under the merciless gaze of Natalia's father, Stepan Stepanovich Chubukov (Adrian Andone), who finally blesses the two under an Orthodox icon, after initially disowning his future son-in-law.

In the second part of the show, The Bear, Elena Ivanovna Popova (Cerasela Iosifescu), a young widow in mourning, extremely devoted to her late husband, is surprised one day when an angry creditor, Grigori Stepanovici Smirnov (Claudiu Bleonț), bursts into the house, having come to recover a debt and is not swayed in any way by the charm or sensitivity of the widow Popova and declares that he will not leave the house without the money that her late husband owed her.

Chronicles of the show:

"Two Love Stories is the show that offers the audience the chance to see another setting in, as Nichita said, the sweet classical style. (…) The current production benefits from the contribution of Adrian Andone. Ideal as a counterpoint to the whirlwind stirred up by his partners. An actor who controls the effects from expressions of British humor or his own brand.

The marriage proposal is very stormy (…) Claudiu Bleonț's acting is very caricatured, like a dilapidated puppet. The suitor illustrated by Cerasela Iosifescu is not only like a young Sicilian, impossible to contradict, but she also metamorphoses her face to match her suitor in caricatured details. (…)

The second part seems to me to show the extent of the acting skills of the protagonists. Adrian Andone changes his game, comes with a slightly stilted speech, with a limp that requires an extra gesture, a stomp, in front of a step, he has the attitude of a clever and shrewd valet, who fulfills what is asked of him but at a pace that makes things follow a nuanced path. Claudiu Bleonț also adds drama to his perorations, his proverbial dynamism is perfectly restrained and controlled. (…)

Cerasela Iosifescu, the actress who can play anything, anytime, metamorphoses in turn. She appears with the tears of mourning assumed severely, but also with the tasty counterexamples or takes on the thrilling reality. When necessary, she is silent and listens to what the leading opinion says with enthusiasm. (…) Then Cerasela Iosifescu resumes the rush of lines, handles the gun with humor and scores decisively through the pauses that force the patience and hope of the guest.

The ending, passionate, with all the contradictory gestures, with humor in its place, is part of the eternity of humanity, which Mircea Cornișteanu always emphasizes in his productions.”

Marius Dobrin, The Spirit of Contradiction, SpectActormagazine no. 1 / 2024

Throughout a prodigious career, director Mircea Cornișteanu has directed more than 160 performances on the stages of more than 25 professional theatres in the country (Nottara, Bulandra, National, Comedie, Ion Creanga in Bucharest, the National Theatres of Craiova, Cluj, Targu Mures, Iasi, or the municipal theatres of Brasov, Galati, Piatra Neamt, Oradea, Ploiesti etc. In 1990 he received ex-aequo the first UNITER Prize for the show Uncle Vanya, produced at the National Theatre of Craiova, in 2011 the show Where's the revolver? produced at TVR, received the UNITER Award for the best TV drama, and in 2010 he received the UNITER Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2004 he was awarded the National Order "Serviciul Credincios" in the rank of knight. He is an honorary member of the "Marin Sorescu" National Theatre in Craiova, of which he was general director from 2000-2016.

"He fully proved it in his best show - and one of the best shows I've ever seen, and not only in Romania -, a show that contributed decisively to the enrollment of the National Theater in Craiova in the foreground of the domestic scenes in the turbulent years of the late 1980-90 decade: Uncle Vanea by Anton Pavlovic Chekhov. A show of extraordinary strength and beauty, a show in which I, for one, understood for the first time (after some seniority in the profession, however) why the sublime Russian author called his plays comedies..." (Alice Georgescu )