Review – Ecaterina Teodoroiu. The Legend On Stage

Editor 19/10/201819/10/2018 Alin Balascan, Ecaterina Teodoroiu - The legend on stage, Liana Ceterchi, Olivia Negrean, Romanian Cultural Institute, Sabina Bijan

Review by Andreea Helen David.

What an astonishing piece of theatre. “Ecaterina Teodoroiu – The Legend On Stage” is a play about a Romanian national heroine, the only woman to have fought in the WW1 in Romania. We are celebrating this year 100 years since the Great War, still reaping benefits of course and still unaware of the great sacrifice we could only try and imagine. We’re also celebrating women this year so this play is perfectly timed.
I got invited to attend because I am Romanian myself. It is in moments like this your heart is filled with hundreds of emotions, pride, missing ( “dor” – as Romanians would say) rage and sadness for our ignorance and many others for which I lack the words for. What a catharsis.

Liana Ceterchi, the writer and director manages to make this topic of the past modern, she combines stage and screen, real and imagined action, poetry and facts, Romanian and English. The play is of course in English but you get beautiful inserts of Romanian songs and poems that are just delightful and bring back memories and meaning to us Romanians but I am sure the foreign ear can enjoy them too.
Ecaterina Teodoroiu is Joan D’arc of Romania. Young, spunky, naive, brave she throws herself in the arms of war at first chance, trying to win it over. We go from scene to scene, through her life in quick flashes, where we learn about the war and fate of little Romanian Kingdom and about her, about her family, about her thinking, faith and evolution – from nurse to Second Lieutenant .

Ecaterina believes with every fibre of her being that Romania will prevail and no injury or war imprisonment can put out that fire in her chest. She had of course set backs not least because of her gender but somehow her spirit lit every room and mind she encountered. It wasn’t long until every soldier in the Romanian army knew about her and that helped them a lot.

Here it is work of the highest calibre and no surprise really coming from Liana Ceterchi, a veteran of the Romanian Theatre, an actress herself. Her ability to work with symbols and metaphors and to present them in such complex setting is second to none.

The sheer information, dedication to the craft and to the heroine overwhelmed me to tears. I was indeed very happy to be there and you will be too.

The cast, put through their own wars by the director, prevails. Olivia Negrean plays Ecaterina with verve and sentiment hitting every note right. She really gives it everything. Alin Balascan plays every male role in the play which is of great diversity – from german generals to a Romanian peasant, he manages to change voice and accent but always staying true to the characters – what a feat.
Sabina Bijan plays Ecaterina’s mother but also seems to represent every woman left behind, hurt by war. She is the symbol of Romania but that is also valid for other nations, where women were left to look after the country while the soldiers looked after the borders. She plays this with sublime surrealism and her voice is as beautiful as her acting.