Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 303
This 2011 production of Yasmina Reza’s Art was directed by Matthew Gardiner at the Signature Theatre in a
Washington, D.C., suburb. The very clever scenic design is by James Kronzer. © Scott Suchman
One of a band of fire-eaters ignites and blows
clouds of flame in the “Walpurgisnacht”
(Feast of Witches) scene in Silviu Purcarete’s
monumental production of Goethe’s Faust.
But the fire-spewer is only one of the 110
performers in this production, which is
presented on two gigantic stages (the
audience is shuffled from one to the other
and back again) in an abandoned factory
outside the city limits of Sibiu, Romania,
where the production was created in 2007
and is still playing at the time of this writing—
and attracting audiences from throughout
the world because of its spectacular reviews
for its 2009 appearance at Scotland’s
famed Edinburgh Festival. Purcarete’s
“Walpurgisnacht” also includes a giant
rhinoceros with two dandified eighteenthcentury
aristocrats riding on its back; a
ninety-actor chorus playing a grotesque army
of hogs, whores, witches, and clowns; a rock
band that plays at full volume above the
audience and actors; white-gowned “virgins”
hanging from the ceiling on grappling hooks.
A blood-soaked Gretchen, who carries a
hog’s head on a platter atop her head, is
leered at by Mephistopheles, played by a
woman (the actress Ofelia Popil). This is no
Feast of Witches; it is sheer Hell. © Mihaela
Marin/The Radu Stanca National Theatre