THE LAST DAY OF MY YOUTH

after Tadeusz Konwicki

DIRECTED BY AND ADAPTATION: Yuri Kordonsky; TRANSLATION: Maşa Dinescu; SCENOGRAPHY AND LIGHT DESIGN: Dragoş Buhagiar;
ORIGINAL MUSIC: Vasile Şirli; CAST: Marian Râlea, Alexandru Malaicu, Veronica Arizancu, Diana Fufezan, Constantin Podu, Ofelia Popii, Iulia Popa, Serenela Mureşan, Cristian Stanca

duration: 2h 10min / ticket price: 25 lei; reduced: 0 lei

The show is an adaptation of the novel A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents of one of the most important contemporary Polish writers Tadeusz Konwicki. The director Yuri Kordonsky calls it “profound literature” that encourages us to reflect on key issues related to the human condition: the loss of innocence, the impossibility to escape the tyranny of history, the man who becomes a victim of the collective drama, the war that destroys lives and destinies. Beautiful and promising, Vitek and Alina are living a teenage love story, like Romeo and Juliet, but in 1939, during the troubled and restless period preceding the Second World War. Sitting at the border between two worlds, one is bohemian, with friends and childhood games, and one is constrained by social conventions, burdened by the fears and preconceptions of their parents. Scenographer Dragoş Buhagiar creates a space that suggests timelessness, a metaphor for lost youth. A forest of white and tall columns, phantoms of rootless trees, and through the middle a river runs and splits the stage in two. The set design is an interpretation of the myth of borders, often associated with the myth of paradise, on one side is Vitek, a young man, a future medical student and on the other is the unknown (Vitek as an adult), played by Marian Râlea, who after the war, returns back to the river where he fell in love, where he ate the poisoned fruit with his sweetheart, where he woke up to see that nothing will ever be the same, he returns to the last day of the youth ...

Awarded Best Performance at Gala UNITER 2012

PREMIERE DATE: 30 OCTOBER 2011