Gertrude. The Scream

Synopsis

Gertrude.The Scream is a classic tragedy that has become a meditation on sexuality and power, an exploration of the most hidden human desires. The radical rewriting of Hamlet, focused on the female figure of Gertrude, lets traditional values ​​collapse under the weight of their own excesses. Gertrude is no longer just Hamlet's mother or the king's widow or Claudius' wife, she is marked by the cry of her own suffering and pleasure, a political and erotic obsession, a voice between agony and ecstasy. We see a Gertrude who no longer has anything to hide. But Hamlet, the son tortured by an extreme morality, is torn by her cry between love and hatred for his own mother. All the characters gravitate around this cry – a symbol of chained impulses. It becomes the center of a theatrical universe in which tensions arise from the struggle between what can be known and what escapes understanding.

Howard Barker is an internationally renowned playwright, whose early plays were performed at the Royal Court and by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Since 1992, his works have been presented by his own company, The Wrestling School. Barker's theatre is characterised by its poetic, non-naturalistic form and constructs worlds of contradiction, suffering and sexual passion. Barker is also a poet and theatre theorist, and his proposed "Catastrophe Theatre" defines a new form of tragedy for our times.

Denisa Hălăngău is a theater director, graduated from the Faculty of Theater and Film, Babeș-Bolyai University, in 2023. Since her first performances, she has shown interest in exploring essentialized forms of artistic expression, purified of any excess and, at the same time, capable of offering the viewer a space for their own imagination. She seeks to shift the emphasis from the text to the emotional score extracted from it, from psychology and interior monologue to body language, acoustic and visual elements. The actor is the central point of the directorial construction, and the interpretive scores are taken to an increased level of intensity by transforming the drama encapsulated in the text into an experience generated with the help of rhythm, bodies and spaces.

During his studies, he approached various texts and styles, consistently experimenting with the essentialization of stage discourse, in performances such as: Stitching by Anthony Neilson (2021), Medea, after Euripides (2022), Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (2022), Richard III by William Shakespeare (2023), 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane (2023), Demons by Lars Norén (2024). He participated with his performances at the Sunlight International Theater Festival, Timișoara (2022); the International Festival of Theater Academies – Dionysus, organized by the Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek, Croatia (2023); the Sibiu International Theater Festival (2023); the International Festival of Young Directors – THEATER NETWORKING TALENTS, Craiova (2023); International Shakespeare Festival, Craiova (2024).

“Gertrude. The Scream brings a text similar to Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine, an analytical reimagining of the Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet in a political discourse. Howard Barker’s text centers on Gertrude as an extremely attractive nymphomaniac who uses her sexuality to dominate politically. Gertrude (Romanița Ionescu) is a mature woman (around 45 years old), who politically instruments her body, has a heightened appetite and not just sexual – she emits deadly sounds, like sirens, her scream in erotic moments is a cosmic cataclysm like Munch’s The Scream. (…) She orders assassinations and generates others, even if she does not order them directly, she is a deadly woman like Medusa. (…) It is an anti-patriarchal text: these women, who connect in the sphere of failed motherhood (Gertrude kills, intentionally or accidentally, both her children, Ragusa fails to secure her child, Isola allies herself with Gertrude, despite the fact that she "(killed sons and grandsons), are the results of a patriarchal environment, and Gertrude's criminal deviation comes in a context in which she could only be a victim or an aggressor. Although she chooses to kill to conquer in a world of men, Gertrude fails to retain power, which she also loses in favor of a man."

Oana Stoica, Revolutions and Crimes, Dilemma / Dec. 18, 2024
https://www.dilema.ro/arte-performative/revolutii-si-crime

"With The Scream, in addition to revisiting the classics, Howard Barker reconstructs, reinvents a secondary character, explores his tragic and negative dimensions, the acceptance and assumption of cruelty, atrocities. The destabilization of the initial structure of the center that occurs by substituting Hamlet with Gertrude is marked on stage by the rotating platform that raises, lowers and knocks down the characters. (…)

Denisa Hălăngău uses the naked body according to Howard Barker's aesthetics. Nudity determines an examination of the characters' identity, their limits, vulnerability, the approach/possibility of death for the king, while for Gertrude, nudity is an act of power and then seduction. In both the first catastrophic situation – the poisoning of the king – and in the second, the murder of Hamlet, Gertrude undresses, denudation as recognition of intentions, an action that implies additional pressure in the actors' play, and Romaniţa Ionescu has strength, courage and experience, and all of them combine in a play with an emphasis on emotional energies, a physical and emotional revelation that is also supported by her stage partners, Ştefan Cepoi (Claudius) and Marian Politic (the Duke of Mecklenberg). (…) Cascan, the impeccable Angel Rababoc, more than a servant, a kind of factotum, protector, the only one who understands her, is a connoisseur of the cry, but also a remarkable raisonneur, who understands the catastrophic situation and suggests the most drastic solution, Hamlet's death. (…)

Gertrude. The Scream is a challenging show for everyone involved, director, actors, spectators, and, beyond the final inconsistency, it resists through the formidable presence of Romanița Ionescu in a remarkable "explicit body performance".

Daniela Firescu, Theatre of catastrophe: desire, denudation and death, Ramuri, Feb. 2025 http://www.revistaramuri.ro/index.php?id=6292&editie=227