Performances / Szigligeti Company / 2025-2026
Mihail Sebastian
Playing with Happiness
Comedy in two parts
Translated by:: József Méliusz
Mihail Sebastian is a distinctive figure in the Romanian dramatic literature of the 20th century. In his play Playing with Happiness, he brings to life the figure of people fleeing from reality into dreams and illusions, who feel that in their dreams they could live more happily, more freely, and more worthy of the human condition... A modest group of people are cut off from society and the real world during a month of freedom. In their isolated boarding house, the telephone wires are cut and the post is not allowed in. The poor intellectual struggling to make ends meet, the beautiful yet simple young girl, the ever-obliging and humble clerk, the high school student preparing for a mathematics revision exam, the retired military officer - all become the heroes of this extraordinary game. The "holiday" (the original title of the play) is a game of happiness, freedom, independence, of finding a place without prejudice, without moral and material misery, without humiliation, without the cruel reality. The game starts well, because in this strange world without constraints, in the Wéber-villa, the land of dreams, they will have a sense of human dignity. There is none of the harsh reality of a cold world ruled by money, where humiliation reigns over respect. Love also blossoms as a high school student, a bureaucrat, and a young intellectual all fall in love with Corina, the subject of their dreams. This feeling is - in fact - a sign of purity, of an insatiable thirst for pure feelings. Corina, with her simplicity, her unpretentious grace and warm words, represents the ideal of true happiness that we all long for, a simple, reassuring human happiness. But the holiday is over - and they must all return to the harsh real world.
Cast of characters:
A felesége:
Bányai Irén
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