The Mihai Eminescu National Theater presents, on the stage of the I. L. Caragiale National Theater in Bucharest, the play “Richard III” by William Shakespeare, translated by Horia Garbea and directed by Petru Hadarca, starring Anatol Durbala in the title role. The event is part of the “Bucharest-Iasi-Chisinau Romanian Theater” project, now in its 11th edition in Bucharest.

Recommended age: 14+

Although the play is a historical tragedy, the production is not a history lesson, but a confrontation with the present. Richard III is no longer just a character from Shakespeare’s world, but a monstrous specter that takes shape in the figures of power today. We discover him with horror in the news, we recognize him in the authoritarian speeches and ambitions of certain political leaders, and his shadow looms ever more menacingly over our lives. The play does not speak of Richard’s physical hunchback, but of the deformation in his mind; it is a lucid X-ray of the mechanisms of power: the manipulation of fear, the seduction of populist rhetoric, violence masked by promises. He no longer inspires fear; on the contrary, he is jovial, likable—he does not threaten, he plays. Richard looks directly at us from the theater stage, but also from the political world, and asks us: how prepared are we to not let him win?

The director condensed the text, restructured it, and supplemented it with short passages from King Henry VI, but kept the verse and phrasing intact. The idea was to help the audience discover the beauty and richness of Shakespearean language, as well as its relevance and depth across the centuries. 

A play about the thirst for power and the price paid by a world that hypnotically trusts in false promises, about how evil does not appear suddenly, but is often tolerated step by step, and how dictators are allowed to rule the world.

Excerpt from the review by Maria Pilchin, Moldova Magazine: “Richard III”, directed by Petru Hadarca and staged at the “Mihai Eminescu” National Theater, functions precisely as such: as an optical, aesthetic, and moral instrument. It is neither a history lesson nor a museum-style reconstruction of the wars for the English throne, but a confrontation with the present, in which the thirst for power feeds on image, on the rhythm of the news, on the hypnotic allure of promises. The performance does, in the most serious sense, what political theater should do: it asks the uncomfortable question without reducing it to a slogan. The mechanisms of manipulation, intimidation, and false intimacy (Richard speaks to you as if you were “on his side”) all take on an organic theatrical form. What matters is that the screen does not cancel out the theater, but rather heightens its tension. The live broadcast does not kill presence, but rather endangers it. And this danger—of being replaced by one’s own image—is precisely the condition of the contemporary human. That is why, when the performance looks directly at us, the gaze is not merely an acting effect, but a pact. You are a spectator, but you are also a witness. You are in the auditorium, but you are also in the city.”

Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu 

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