Pleasure Factory
Category: PlaysNottara Theatre, Bucharest
“Pleasure Factory”/ Uzina de plăceri S.A.
The premiere took place on the 16th of October 2002 in the Nottara Theatre, Bucharest. It is based on the play titled “Like Snow White and the Two”, winner of the Great Prize of the Camil Petrescu National Playwriting competition in 2000. Stage director Alexandru Berceanu was awarded the young creators’ prize by the Romanian Ministry of Culture and Religious Cults in 2003 for this production.
The performance was invited to the 2003 edition of FestCo (Romanian Comedy Festival). It was also presented during the 14th edition of the Contemporary Playwriting Festival in Brasov, where main actor Virgil Ogăşanu was awarded the best actor prize. It was attended the Comedy Festival in Galaţi, where the same actor playing the Old Man was awarded the best actor prize once more.
You can still see the performance, for it still is the repertoire of the above-mentioned theatre.
Stage Director: Alexandru Berceanu
Costumes: Ina Isbăşescu
Casting:
The Old Man: Virgil Ogăşanu
The Tenant: Lucian Ghimişi / Dan Bordeianu
The Phone Operator: Crenguţa Hariton
„The play lacks any political subtext and it can bee seen as a poetical comedy that proves the playwright’s skill in theatrical convention and character building. The theme is both simple and striking, but this is not the most important aspect. What matters most, is the subtle humour and sadness, the exuberance and the lyricism endowing the play with particular charm. In an apartment full of pieces of old furniture, there live an old man and his habits, the same every day. He talks to his tom-cat and to his books, he encourages himself every morning by saying “I’m in such a good shape”, he goes to the graveyard to pay visits not only to the tombs of his relatives and friends, but also t his own tomb, from which the date of his death is the only thing missing. (…) This performance staged in a hall as intimate as The Studio, housed by the Nottara Theatre, is sure to make an offer to be appreciated by that audience longing for pieces of true life, but also for metaphors. The play proves a call for theatre, just as it expresses the author’s poetical sense and sense of humour too. Most of it is static, for it is about inner conflicts. (…)” (Eugen Comarnescu, „Surprise Playwright”, in Cronica română, October 22, 2002)
„ (…) Each and every morning an old man deceiving himself, thinking that it is the beginning of a better and more beautiful day. He longs for some conversation until one day when his dull life is troubled by an unknown person who becomes his tenant. He takes the name of the owner’s cat and he plays the professional winner wishing to overcome an illness deriving from poverty: the Bingo-mania that has seized Romanians. Then there comes a hotline professional, an innocent girl, with a trauma from her childhood, determined to hide, but also to make a revenge by phone. The three characters share moments of ordinary joy as well as moment of stupid harassment, getting involved in a game of well-tempered ambiguity (played on a carefully selected music column). This sanctions the fake (and the slogan!) life, just as it sanctions self-delusion and the solitude anxiety. It culminates in an open denouement, which can also be interpreted as an abstract, still credible solution, which is no less exciting. (Irina Coroiu, „3 Valentin Nicolau”, Contemporanul, no. 1-4, January 2003)
„I was ready and enthusiastically ready to write a review of a play/performance I enjoyed (is this something to be ashamed of?) a lot: “Pleasure Factory”, based on the play written by Valentin Nicolau. I saw it at the Nottara Theatre last Saturday, a few days ago. The playwright is better known as the ‘boss’ of Nemira Publishing House, a true success in the last 16 years. He is also known as a former president of the Romanian Public Television Network. And if people talk nice of you are ‘boss’ no longer, this is sure to be something, since we live in a world divided between ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’. (…) But they miss the essential for a man’s profile. Valentin Nicolau, who looks both gloomy and threatening (the famous violin player David Oistrach embodied the same contradiction between the physical and the metaphysical), is a remarkable playwright indeed! Not only because he was praised by a Romanian literary critic as notorious as Nicolae Manolescu when he made his debut with a collection of plays and due to some prized warded by the Romanian Association of Theatre Artists and the Romanian Ministry of Culture. He is a remarkable playwright simply because his plays are readable. And now they have made it on stage. I didn’t see “The Legend of the Last Emperor” directed by Alice Barb and staged by the National Theatre in Bucharest and I have neither seen his other plays staged in theatres in other Romanian cities. I just read them before being published and I bet on them. And I am glad that the author has been confirmed by other ‘sources’ too.
The play staged at the Nottara Theatre has turned into a coherent and – absurdly – romantic performance, a lyrical production with respect for the classical theatre-making craft, endowed with ideas, substance and tension. The dialogue and the humorous absurd of the situations taken from contemporary life, which we too live in, are masterfully rendered and used by a stage director as young as Alexandru Berceanu and also by the actors: the much experienced Virgil Ogaşanu and Crenguţa Hariton, proving herself a very gifted actress. The performance has got rhythm, the dialogue is charming and the costumes authored by Inei Isbăşescu suggest the so dear universe of our daily dirt. The one we treat with mild irony: now with fury, then with acceptance. We are uncomplaining – both yes and no. We harbor lots of illusions: yes and no. Even so: yes and no. Why? Because this is how the story goes. This is it. (…) The play and the aspiration continue after the curtain falls on stage. We don’t know if Valentin Nicolau (…) can turn into a top playwright, but he surely seems to. And we wish him not to give up playwriting. (…)!” (Bedros Horasangian, “Pleasure Factory at Nottara”, Ziua, July 4, 2006)