When Kings Dress as Beggars: Divine Comedy in Babylon by the Tamasi Aron Theatre from Sfantu Gheorghe

“An Angel Arrives in Babylon”: Nebuchadnezzar, the Failed Dictator, and Divine Comedy

At the Tamási Áron Theatre, Babylon isn’t just a set—it’s a living, breathing cinematic playground, where absolute power, absurdity, and vanity collide like a Wes Anderson film crashing into Kubrick, with a dash of Chaplin slapstick thrown in. 

And at the center of this absurd universe is MÁTRAY László as Nebuchadnezzar: part all-knowing overlord, part spoiled child, part absolute seducer, and for fleeting moments, hopelessly in love.

Love, Destiny… and Absolute Power

Dürrenmatt’s 1953 play isn’t just a story—it’s a philosophical firecracker about an age too wicked to recognize virtue. Here, in the Tamási Áron staging, it hits uncomfortably close to home. From Hitler to Trump to Orbán, Nebuchadnezzar embodies every authoritarian leader who believes that charm, charisma, or sheer force can bend hearts and rewrite destiny. Spoiler: they can’t.

The angel sends Kurrubi, a celestial virgin, to Earth with a divine gift meant for Akki, Babylon’s humblest beggar. 

But of course, she falls in love with the king instead. 

Chaos ensues. 

Comedy ensues. 

Existential philosophy ensues. 

It’s a divine love triangle that could double as a political satire.

MÁTRAY László: Nebuchadnezzar in Ultra-Close-Up

László commands the stage like a living cinematic close-up. His Nebuchadnezzar is a paradox: one moment all-knowing and intimidating, the next a child throwing a tantrum over a stolen candy. When he unwittingly seduces Kurrubi, it’s a Chaplin-meets-film-noir moment, simultaneously hilarious, sexy, tragic, and ridiculous. 

Every gesture, every glance, every dramatic pause feels like it could be frozen on a movie poster.

The Begging Contest: Absurdity in Long Take

Nebuchadnezzar challenges Akki in a beggar’s contest—a continuous long-take of comic brilliance. The actors move like synchronized figures in a Wes Anderson tableau, lights flickering like candle flames, audience eyes darting between absurdly poetic gestures and razor-sharp timing.

 Kurrubi is “won” by the king, Akki wins Nimrod, and everyone in the audience is simultaneously laughing, gasping, and pondering the cruel logic of fate.

Kurrubi’s Refusal: Tension in Slow-Mo

When Kurrubi refuses to become queen, the play slows into a Hitchcockian montage of heartbreak and rage. 

Close-ups on MÁTRAY László’s face reveal fury, confusion, and wounded pride, all while the audience thinks: “Yes, this is every dictator ever who thought the world owed them love.” 

The satire bites deep: power is no match for destiny—or for divine intervention.

The Tower of Babel: Cinematic Climax

Furious, Nebuchadnezzar builds the Tower of Babel. Vertiginous set pieces soar, shadows stretch like endless columns, and the lighting flickers as if the gods themselves are watching. Actors move through this baroque playground like a Tarkovski dream filtered through Monty Python, a mix of solemnity, absurdity, and pure comic chaos. 

Every eye in the house is glued to the stage, marveling at the scale, the precision, and the utter theatrical brilliance.

Political Punchline and Brilliant Ensemble

This play can’t be performed at official theatre festivals in Hungary—its political subtext is too raw, too pointed at authoritarian power. But at Sfântu-Gheorghe, the Tamási Áron Theatre troupe shines like Romania’s most intense, jusqu’au-boutiste actors, giving everything on stage, risking everything, and delivering an energy that could light up the night sky over Babylon itself.

Final Verdict: A Theatrical Masterpiece

An Angel Arrives in Babylon isn’t just theatre—it’s a living cinematic, poetic, absurd, and political extravaganza. By the final curtain, the audience is roaring, weeping, laughing, and stunned all at once. You leave feeling like you’ve witnessed a masterpiece, a show that makes you see dictators, love, fate, and divine absurdity in a whole new light—and you carry it with you, laughing and marveling, long after the angels have left the stage.

By Giulia Dobre, Nov 17th 2025, Paris

Lear, ou comment tout perdre en dix perruques-THeatre Amer a La Cartoucherie

 

Le Roi Lear, ou l’Art Très Sérieux de Tout Faire S’effondrer Avec Grâce

Il existe des spectacles où l’on sent que la troupe n’a pas de moyens, mais un mélange sauvage de culot, de tendresse, de sueur, et un optimisme dangereux. 

Et puis il y a Le Roi Lear de Mathieu Coblentz, qui parvient à faire croire qu’une poignée d’ampoules, trois perruques rebelles et une terre noire mal tamisée suffisent à convoquer Shakespeare, un ouragan métaphysique et un concours de glam rock préchrétien.
Oui, tout ça à la fois.

La troupe Théâtre Amer — sept comédiens/musiciens dont la joie féroce ferait pâlir un banquet viking — livre un Lear resserré, réinventé, rafraîchi, presque secoué dans un shaker jusqu’à dégager une vapeur de conte philosophique.

 Les moyens sont pauvres, mais l’expression scénique est riche comme un vieux roi qui aurait tout dépensé en bijoux, puis aurait décidé que la vraie noblesse, finalement, c’était de finir en slip (ou en feuillage biblique).

Lear, mais version « rock baroque au Théâtre du Soleil »

Mathieu Coblentz a décidé de faire du mastodonte shakespearien un spectacle « accessible à partir de 13 ans ». Ce qui, soit dit entre nous, revient à proposer du whisky single malt dans une gourde Hello Kitty — mais étonnamment, ça marche.

La traduction d’Emmanuel Suarez est moderne sans se transformer en dérapage Instagram ; les dialogues ont cette verdeur qu’on imagine Shakespeare adopter s’il avait un jour pris l’apéro au Bouche-à-Oreille de la Cartoucherie. 

Ça fuse, ça grince, ça pique, et parfois ça déborde tellement qu’on perd un personnage au passage — mais après tout, dans Lear, tout le monde finit par tomber dans un trou, alors une disparition ou deux n’enlève rien à l’affaire.

Une esthétique entre Apocalypse Now et un bal de village médiéval

Sur la scène du Théâtre du Soleil, les interprètes évoluent comme dans un film tourné en plans improvisés, traversant trois niveaux de plateau comme on descendrait un escalier vers la folie.
Le fond de scène, encadré d’ampoules façon cabaret hanté, sert de mini-scène dans la scène — un écran mental, un rêve, un cauchemar, on ne sait pas, mais on regarde.

Le costumier, lui, semble avoir été pris d’une joie carnassière :
des tissus en rébellion,
des perruques qui rivalisent de volume,
des épées et… des revolvers.
Oui, Shakespeare avec des revolvers : quelque part, un puriste gémit, mais la salle se régale.

Au sol, un tapis inégal de terre noire — un peu comme si la tragédie avait voulu rappeler que tout finit tôt ou tard dans le compost. Les maquillages outranciers complètent le tableau : tout le monde ressemble à des allégories sorties d’un tarot ésotérique, ce qui est probablement la meilleure manière d’aborder Lear.

Lear, ce grand bébé cataclysmique

Florian Westerhoff, dans le rôle du Roi, offre une performance à mi-chemin entre un monarque shakespearien et un prophète en pleine décomposition morale.
Il enlève ses bijoux, ses fourrures, sa dignité, son pouvoir — comme on pèle un oignon jusqu’à trouver au centre… un homme nu, fragile, hurlant dans la tempête.

À l’épilogue, il surgit dans le plus simple appareil, couvert d’une feuille biblique, tel un Adam expulsé du paradis mais qui n’aurait pas lu la notice avant d’y entrer. 

C’est touchant, absurde, beau et un peu ridicule : bref, c’est du Shakespeare.

Le fou : prophète, clown, lanceur d’alerte

On retient, comme un coup de tonnerre moderne, la phrase du fou :
« C’est un malheur du temps que les fous guident les aveugles ! »

Il la lance comme un tweet antique, un aphorisme qui, quatre siècles plus tard, n’a rien perdu de son acidité. Le public rit jaune — après tout, on sait bien que les fous ne guident pas seulement les aveugles : ils écrivent les lois, tiennent les talk-shows et dirigent parfois des royaumes entiers, même quand ceux-ci ressemblent à des salles de répétition mal éclairées.

En somme : un Lear vivant, fiévreux, drôle malgré lui, et parfaitement — joyeusement — humain

Ce Roi Lear est une tempête bricolée, un cauchemar lumineux, un spectacle qui respire la débrouille géniale.
On en sort un peu décoiffé, un peu bouleversé, un peu hilare —
comme si Shakespeare nous avait soufflé un secret dans l’oreille, puis un bon vent dans le dos.

Giulia Dobre, Paris, Nov 17, 2025

UN POETA — Poetry, Alcohol & Other Cleaning Products

 

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UN POETA — The Man Who Mistook Himself for a Poem

There are films that begin like a sunrise,

others like a punch, 

and then there are those—like Un Poeta—that start like a brand-new car emerging from a deliriously complex water tunnel.

Everything glitters.
Everything drips.
Everything feels freshly scrubbed, even if the driver is a wreck.

Óscar—played with fragile bravado by Ubeimar Ríos— was once a poet. 

Or at least he once published two books that smelled faintly of recognition. 

Now, in his fifties, tossed back into his mother’s house like a returning tide, he clings to his identity with the desperation of someone holding the only umbrella in a storm that doesn’t care.

His insistence—“Un Poeta!”—echoes like a tragic joke, like something between Fellini’s lost dreamers, Kaurismäki’s lovable wrecks, and Charlie Kaufman’s solipsistic heroes who believe the universe is a theatre built only for their suffering.

Yet this is where the fabulous script and acting perform their miracle: every time Óscar sinks into melodrama, the film flicks him lightly on the forehead with humor. 

Every despair is echoed by a ridiculous gesture; 

every tragedy by a crooked shirt collar or a poorly chosen metaphor.

It’s as if the camera itself were raising an eyebrow.

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The Comedy of a Man Who Forgot to Grow Up

Óscar is introduced as a man permanently misaligned—hair in rebellion, teeth in protest, shirts that look like they escaped from a discount bin during a small riot. 

He speaks about poetry the way some speak about religion—eyes lifted toward a divine ceiling fan, voice trembling with the sacred weight of syllables.

The opening scene, where he throws himself onto his mother’s bed and screams that he can’t do anything but write poems, is pure tragicomic opera. A scene that could be played in slow motion, accompanied by Puccini, except that the only audience he has is his exhausted mother—and us, already stifling a laugh.

Simón Mesa Soto, in his second feature, wields tone the way a violinist wields a bow. 

The shift from the dramatic to the absurd is so fluid it recalls Buñuel, Roy Andersson, and at times Almodóvar’s early mischievous compassion. Every situation contains a joke trembling beneath its tragedy.

Óscar, pouring alcohol into his thermos before teaching, becomes a walking metaphor: a man trying to disinfect the day with a personal antiseptic. 

His monologues to students—half-philosophy, half-nonsense—are both hilarious and heartbreaking. We laugh, but with the uncomfortable awareness that we could one day become him.

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The Spark Named Yurlady

Then comes Yurlady—fifteen, talented, luminous.
A poet disguised as a teenager.
A spark in Óscar’s stale universe.

Her presence feels like a third act plot twist in a Truffaut film, a gust of life in a room with too few windows. 

Óscar, suddenly awakened, shines again—freshly rinsed, like that car leaving the water tunnel, headlights gleaming with the illusion that everything is possible.

He sees a mission. A destiny.
To make Yurlady a great poet.
To resurrect himself through her talent.

But like a character in a Coen brothers comedy, Óscar’s noble intentions topple into chaos. 

He missteps. 

He misunderstands. 

He pushes where he should listen. 

The situation unravels in scenes of delightful absurdity, as though fate were choreographed by a mischievous editor with a fondness for jump cuts.

His literary peers reject him.
He begs a bookseller to resurrect his forgotten volumes.
He rages against the world as if it were a poorly written stanza.

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A Poem of Class, Ego, and Fragile Dreams

And then the film expands.
It becomes a fresco.

Yurlady’s overcrowded apartment, vibrating with life, becomes a parallel universe. A place where poetry is not a career crisis but a luxury nobody asked for. Here, the film grows sharper, more socially resonant, without losing its absurd elegance.

The script navigates these contradictions with a tightrope walker’s grace.
We understand Óscar’s every wrong turn.
We foresee every disaster.
We watch him march straight into them anyway—
a Don Quixote without a horse,
tilting at windmills made of paper and half-remembered verses.

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Conclusion: A Film About the Ridiculous Beauty of Wanting

Un Poeta is, in the end, a tale of a man who wants too much and too little at the same time.

A film that laughs at its own sadness.
A poem disguised as a comedy disguised as a tragedy.
A chronicle of a man freshly washed by the world, shining for a second, and muddy again before the credits roll.

It is funny, it is tender, it is cruel, it is fabulously acted and sharply written—
and like every great film about broken dreamers,
it leaves you wondering whether a poet is someone who writes verses,
or someone who simply refuses to stop dreaming,
even when reality is already closing the water tunnel behind him.

By Giulia Dobre

Nov 17th 2025

Paris