The Game of Life and Death in the Desert of Ash by Horia Lovinescu A fabulous play and an extraordinary actor

 The Game of Life and Death in the Desert of Ash by Horia Lovinescu

A fabulous play and an extraordinary actor

Jocul Vietii si al Mortii in Desertul de Cenusa

 

A wonderful play, even if it does not exist on goodreads, where some tens of millions of books have been listed.

I intend to introduce this new name there, even if I have some qualms about it.

I have seen the play on stage, at the Nottara Theater, where the giant George Constantin played the father.

It is not clear how we have come to this, but an Apocalypse certainly had happened.

Therefore we have a desert of ash, where the father lives with Abel and Ana.

Abel is the “good guy”, kind to the point of mockery and frailty.

The father despises him, but that is because he is evil and holds a grudge up to the point where a transformation takes place and is either saved by a vision, or just goes off his rocker.

After playing the old satire, the father finds a pillar that he says is a cross and hangs on it, in a clear reference to Jesus and his ordeal.

The names Abel and Cain refer to the same Biblical story, although Ana is a change from the Eve that got to know sin in Paradise.

Ana is sixteen and showing signs that the hormones are having effect and:

-          She starts to smell the scent of a man

In the approximate words of the Father

He is calling Abel to order, because the pure son does not seem to realize that his friendship with the teenager may veer into a strange and dangerous territory:

-          Stop fooling around with her

 

But then the Father kisses the girl on the mouth.

It all changes with the arrival of The Prodigal Son, which is another reference to the Bible, of course.

The Prodigal Son is called….Cain, what else?

He seems to have inherited the genes of his father, even if he is mean in equal measure to everybody: Father, Ana and Abel.

Cain boasts about the fact that he killed people with his own hands.

He seems to exert an attraction, in spite of, or because he is not only indifferent, but hostile to Ana:

-          Keep the girl away from me

 

Cain tells his brother, and when Abel protests, Cain insists:

-          I am not interested in her, but she makes circles around me.

And truth be told, Ana has sex with Cain, for we cannot call it making love.

They are fighting each other even as they have intimate encounters.

There is a tension throughout the play and, knowing the end of the biblical story of Cain and Abel, we expect the worse.

The mental health of the Father is deteriorating rapidly. He sees a cross, where there is a pillar and starts hallucinating.

A sad thing happens, just as Father is starting to be gentle, talk softly, not in the bullying tones of the previous days.

The actor in this role is Magnificent: he is The Father, the Evil, Cupid, a kind of Iago creating marital problems and the end he plays a Shakespearean fool, a jester. But-

-          “jesters do oft prove prophets”

A fabulous play and an extraordinary actor