"The sensational show follows the principle of deformity and of enormity. Like Caragiale, Mr. Mălăele sees monstrously and very funnily. The nonconformist director moves the characters from A Lost Letter to another Letter, thus opening the envelope and moving the multitude of masks towards old age.

The show is replete with sparks of the Mălăele brand, which is really apotheotic in the appearance of famous Dandanache in the wheelchair of the handicapped with bell, pushed by two companions, personal counsellors of the VIP. And the discussion between the senile and his political allies reaches the comical sublime. There can be no more, there can be no higher!

And we have the mastery of words. Mălăele’s performance surpasses everything brilliant that has been performed up to him, in this role. (...) everything the actor Mălalele is a comical performative monument. (...) The intonation originates from the sky of comedy. The satirical expression is diabolic. Enormous caricature. The tableau is Romanian dantesque.

Mălăele’s letter, deliberately polemical, courageously aesthetic, is undoubtedly very comical. The feast lasts for one hour and three quarters, without breaks, is popular with the spectators, arouses much buoyancy, the ones from the young generation applaud him as such, and the devil’s advocates most certainly take him under close scrutiny".

Dinu Grigorescu, Literatorul – Hot Shot Mălăele in a Letter at NTB

"(...) Caragiale’s characters and their retorts make reference to reality outside theatre – this time democratic, not totalitarian – which they undo and translate in a plastic manner.  A second Trahanache, not stupid at all, but upgraded, as we know, with Caţavencu, is Agamemnon Dandanache, memorably impersonated by Mălăele. (...)  The supreme idiot of the play, as many have seen him, is actually the most lucid performer of reality in which he moves and in which the starving want to become fat as well. (...)  Their bellies are enviable, seen from below; and rather embarrassing, seen from above. The great combiners and winners have no beer bellies to be admired by citizens, nor letters to lose. (...). Go to the National to see them".
Daniel Cristea Enache, Observator Cultural – In Swift’s World     
"A recent show – a personal vision by Horațiu Mălăele, who is also director – enacted on the stage of the National Theatre of Bucharest makes topical and visible, not only the absurd and misery of Romanian political life  - often perceived with tenderness and bemusement -, but especially the grotesque and ugliness of this world. A show – A Lost Letter by I.L. Cara¬giale, entitled The Letter, in the NTB version – very plastic and engaging. With expressionistic highlights in the stage design, but also in the actors’ performance. As we have not yet seen such a Caragiale (...)"
Bedros Horasangian, Observator Cultural – In the Country of Horațiu Mălăele   
Caragiale’s "Lost Letter" becomes also "The Letter" of Horațiu Mălăele, reread in a new directorial key, but without leaving the pattern imposed by the author. (...)  Mălăele has eliminated the long tirades of the politicians (which we anyway witness daily in Parliament and on television...), however, he insisted more on the sketching of characters, defined in the first place, by bellies directly proportional to the height of their social status. (...)  It is true, the world of Caragiale, like our world, is rather sad and mean, but Mălăele succeeds in talking about it without passion, without venom or obstinacy, with an Olympian, reassuring detachment. As for his specific jokes, which transgress the show from beginning to the end, we leave you, beloved spectator, to enjoy them by discovering them yourself."
Gabriela Hurezean, Cronica Română – The Beer Belly as Resistance Pillar of Society
"Horaţiu Mălăele affords and assumes the luxury of creating a script after "A Lost Letter", which he entitles "The Letter". However, do not be scared, the result is not an oddity looking for the unusual at any cost, but a gallop of sanity, a dense and coherent circuit in the history of love and political machination, as we know it. In other words, a true, authentic Caragiale, by Horaţiu Mălăele. The result is a show with a strong personality, with an impressive plasticity and a careful comical structure.
(...)   a concentrated Caragiale, who draws your interest, an unbetrayed Caragiale, capitalized on the contrary, focused, a fine, but acute croquis of a frighteningly topical universe. Purely theatrical! Purely National!"
Răzvana Niţă, Port.ro - "Schizoid" – Political log book: from "gâri-mâri" to "purely constitutional"

The show from the National Theatre intensifies and amplifies the satire to the maximum (as a supreme proof of the classic’s visionary lucidness). At the same time, it insists on a generalization in time, on the arch: past where the present can be found, present mirroring and perpetuating the past. (...) The world of « forms without substance » (according to the famous theory by Maiorescu) becomes at the same time one of the lack of substance and form. (...) Horaţiu Mălăele extracts Caragiale from the register of classical realism, situating him in the realm of the grotesque, burlesque, kitsch, lack of measure in all and everything. (...) Great master of comedy, himself a brilliant artist, backed by a gifted caricaturist, Horaţiu Mălăele-the director inspiredly pushes the buttons of funny and witty effects: original entrances on stage, gestural, visual and acoustic, ironic counterpoints, contrasts inducing laughter, ingenious alternations of paces.
Natalia Stancu, Teatrul azi, no.12 - Caragiale – between topicality and violently grotesque stylisation