GERTRUDE

Synopsis

The rewriting of the story of the enigmatic Danish prince, Hamlet, from the perspective of the playwright Radu F. Alexandru, dispels many of the uncertainties of the play The Great Will, giving the famous characters unsuspected meanings and valences. In Gertrude, the Queen Mother, bearer of ultimate guilt, becomes the diabolical mastermind behind a scenario of adultery, lies, murder, and power. Who is the King's killer? Does he deserve punishment or forgiveness? Did the father kill the father? ‒ are questions that seek their answer in an action in which suspicious motivations intertwine with the suspenseful moments of a thriller. The author does not abandon the Shakespearean interrogation by showing us the young Hamlet ‒ with all his anguish ‒ tirelessly searching for the truth.

Chronicles:

The show Gertrude by Silviu Purcărete is a perfect visual-cinematic poem. With big acting roles. A rapid and intense dissection, a film of essential frames, those that call the viscerality of sin and the darkness of Power. A lesson in theater anatomy. Of life. A Japanese saga around guilt. A story of exceptional pictoriality about the absolute purity of theater as mystery and performance.

Marina Constantinescu, România literară, nr. 50/2023

...the show would like to awaken and shake the consciences of the modern, careless man. The austerity of the staging, based on the performance of Dragoș Buhagiar's scenography, which follows the flow of ideas, marking the message through studied and millimetrically executed cutouts, the precise, sober, almost demonstrative play of the actors, the dramatic musical commentary signed by Vasile Şirli make us consider this recent premiere of the National Theater in Bucharest, a triumph of contemporary art theater. Memorable scenes and frames, such as the dissection of the corpse (a mouse race otherwise) in search of the motive of the crime, or the opening of the scene to bring the lying dead king in all his smallness into the light, the bathtub from which Claudiu emerges into the boudoir where Gertrude grotesquely pampers herself, the groping tango between Hamlet and Horatio are artistic arguments that the play makes in favor of a demonstration of the power that corrupts and disseminates lies to the deepest layers of society. A warning that is always needed.

Doina Papp, Revista 22, 28.11.2023

Silviu Purcărete imagines and constructs cinematographically, appealing to an aesthetic of the fragmentary, a disturbing spectacle, which goes beyond the first level of the exposition of the facts and pushes the narrative fable into the allegorical. 

...the show of the great Silviu Purcărete with the play of Radu F. Alexandru certifies a solidly consolidated directorial poetics, amazing in everything, in which the dramatic material and the abundance of references and cultural details form a common body.

Dana Pocea, Contemporanul, 3.01.2024

The show needs to be seen several times to be able to remember all the subtleties that Silviu Purcărete indulged in. To which we must add Vasile Şirli, the creator of music and sometimes unsettling sounds, who have become, as they say, a character more than a sound curtain. Finally, Dragoș Buhagiar's scenography also participates in the construction of this theatrical event.

Nicolae Prelipceanu, Viața Românească, nr. 1/2024