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Shakespeare, I love you – worthy of love
By Margareta Ghicu | Published in Theatre magazine, December 2008
A month of presents and lots of reasons to celebrate, December 2008 brought those who love theatre the Wake Art Theatre
production, Shakespeare, I love you, released on the 4th of the month in Bucharest at The Ark Theatre, a play whose title may send
them back to the classic and most representative age of theatre in history, but a play which is anything else but classic.
Shakespeare, I love you, a play about theatre, about what it means to be an actor, regardless of whether you perform on a stage
on in the streets, a play about love and competition, based on some of the most popular scenes of the unrivalled creation of the English
playwright. A script written and drawn on stage by Sorin Misiriantu, the show brings into the spotlights the story of a former student of
the Drama school, Steve (impetuously interpreted by Adrian Balint) and an experienced street actress, Mary Lou (interpreted by Anca
Lăcusteanu), two opposite personalities, but driven by the same ambition, that of surviving in a world where the natural laws make it
possible only for greatness and full devotion in art to mean something and lead to success. Exploiting numerous states, hypotheses and
adverse responses to the idea of perceiving a Shakespearean reality, the two gradually acknowledge the fact that their success can only
be granted by the power of their love and competition bursts.
Always unpredictable in terms of visualizing different scenes and the outcome of his work, the director Sorin Misiriantu is consistent
this time too, as he finds a most inspired solution to bring the classicism of the initial text in the very modernism of our times, that of
blending a very demanding and spectacular acting performance and a variable, original and complex musical one, composed by himself
and following the precise steps of the persistent situation spin turns. The fact that this play leans towards the peaks of modernism and
practicality and those of the natural can also be sensed when analyzing the set, the costumes or the props, chosen on the very edges of
simplicity, precisely with the goal of emphasizing the purity of the act and the fact that the play is about the two actors, not necessarily
about what they are saying from Shakespeare’s works.
Shakespeare, I love you is a performance in modern English, which means that the scenes from Shakespeare’s works are also
adapted in order to increase the level of accessibility and to strengthen the perception of the director, as well as the purposes and
expectations of this play, as it was born precisely for being presented on different stages around the world, not only in Romania, where it
has already been welcomed with open arms and great deals of appreciation and confidence.
Wake Art Theatre
Shakespeare, I love you by Sorin Misirianţu, based on Shakespeare’s plays
With: Adrian Balint as Steve, Anca Lăcusteanu as Mary Lou
Stage director: Sorin Misirianţu
Today’s Shakespeare, I love you
By Cristina Drimba | Published in Theatre Magazine, December 2008
Who said that Shakespeare requires a performance in the old-fashioned or should I say, in the classic way? Whoever has thought
of that is as wrong as anyone could be. Wake Art Theatre has proved us all wrong, by releasing their new play, Shakespeare, I love
you, a play directed and written by Sorin Misiriantu, based on some of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, which has been presented so far in
Bucharest’s Ark Theatre and at the National Theatre in Cluj-Napoca.
Built on the performances of two young and very talented actors, Adrian Balint and Anca Lăcusteanu, Shakespeare, I love you,
outlines the destiny of Steve and Mary Lou, an extremely arrogant student of the Drama school and a successful street actress, who
carry, as a couple both on the stage and in life, an outstanding struggle for survival and decent living, starting from different scenes from
the English playwright’s works. Inspired by Nietzsche’s words, “What doesn’t destroy you only makes you stronger”, the two overcome
the obstacle of failure, which veils their performances at first and stick stubbornly to the provocation of using love and competition in
their favour, sensing that these two can guarantee a solid and believable relationship between the characters they interpret as well as
between themselves.
The idea of the script is augmented by the original features that the director of the play chose with the utmost inspiration. A play
painted in black in order to emphasize the idea of complete transparency and simplicity before the eyes of the audience, a play imagined
in a minimalist set, Shakespeare, I love you is centred on the acting performances of the two characters, acting performances which
are doubled by exceptional singing insertions, in various registers, whose composer is once again Sorin Misiriantu, a director whose
little escapes towards the idea of music integrated in theatre are well-known among those who have seen other plays he has directed.
Conceived in modern English, the play wishes to gather the audiences throughout the world in front of this form of art by introducing
them in compensatory universes which shape the characters’ personalities through their emotional cargo, the discrepancies between the
states they involve and through their musicality. Shakespeare, I love you, a play which loves the idea of syncretism, a play about love
and loving to act, a play which makes us love the two characters and their ambitions and which makes us love Shakespeare.
Wake Art Theatre
Shakespeare, I love you by Sorin Misirianţu, based on Shakespeare’s plays
With: Adrian Balint as Steve, Anca Lăcusteanu as Mary Lou
Stage director: Sorin Misirianţu
