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   REQUIEM    
 
the Irish premiere of a play by
Leonid Andreyev

director  Horatiu Mihaiu

choreographer  Libby Seward
stage manager  Sile Penkert
set designer  Adam Wallace
lighting designer  Jim Daly
music director  Laurienne Fiorentino
costume designer  Deirdre Dwyer
production manager  Marcus Quinlan

    from poster for 'Requiem'
design by Wayne Daly
This was a new challenge for WYD. It brought together the symbolist theatre of Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919) with today's image theatre of central Europe. The original short play by Andreyev was written during the darkest days of the First World War, as Russia's Tsarist empire was about to crumble. It reflects the uncertainty and despair of those changing times. Romanian director Horatiu Mihaiu and his WYD team clothed the bare and gloomy bones of the written play with music, dance, humour and even sleight-of-hand magic tricks without destroying the seriousness of the theme.

The Royal Highness Dentistry and the Decay of Mankind Little Red Riding Hood The Ghost

Critic Declan Hassett of the Irish Examiner wrote: 'A play about the making of a play by a relatively obscure Russian writer with a Romanian director would not immediately suggest success, but I was simply blown away by the sheer intelligence, ingenuity, dynamism and level of collective performance demonstrated by WYD... The miracle worker is Horatiu Mihaiu, a proponent of imaginative and symbolist theatre in his native Romania, and he brought all his directorial skills to bear on this production... Unreserved praise then for all concerned...'
 

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Some of the cast Some of the crew The orchestra The reception
 

Horatiu Mihaiu      Horatiu Mihaiu had been an architect for more than ten years when he turned to stage design shortly before the Romanian revolution of December 1989. He rose quickly to the top of his field through his work in the new image theatre techniques in productions such as '17 Acts with Piet Mondrian' and 'Picasso: Outlandos d'Amour'. Recently he has worked as designer and director with the Underground Theatre of Targu Mures, Romania.

This was his first visit to Ireland.