In order for all this to blend harmoniously and carry the audience to the port on the back of rolling waves and light or increasing winds, every element of the performance must be in perfect harmony. And this time, it is. No visual element, sound or movement is excessive or self-serving; the overall balance is perfect. Zsolt Gedő, who plays one of the roles, shows a completely new side of himself and his abilities, his delivery imbued with a whole range of emotions. The other, Lóránd Farkas, is the more mature one, the observer of events, who resonates, reflects and questions the actions of the other. Their duo is also excellent because, as a viewer, I can feel that both characters are me, that I am seeing conflicting parts of myself, that the emotions of different periods of my life are coming to life. But I can also sense what the ideal friend is like, the accommodating family member who does not interrogate but accompanies me wherever my path may lead.
Márta Bodó: Ami mélyebb a szavaknál [What is deeper than words], Szabadság, February 18, 2025.
In the performance entitled I Am the Wind, hovering on the border between existence and non-existence is a defining feature, and yet the transcendent dimensions that are incomprehensible to all living beings somehow become "tangible" and perceptible to the senses. Gábor Tompa's production uses a certain "lyrical" theatrical language to speak about that which cannot be put into words, and about the paths that may open up for us toward the unfathomable mystery of existence.
Judit Kiss: Létünk végességével szembesítő líra a színpadon – Sokféle dimenziót nyit meg az Én vagyok a szél [Lyrical stage confrontation of the finite nature of our existence – I Am the Wind opens up many dimensions], Krónika Online, March 1, 2025.
I Am the Wind is a very special production; so special that afterwards I walked down the street for minutes on end as if something had hit me in the solar plexus; I stopped at least three times because I couldn't breathe. Strange, because sitting in the theater I felt I could endure the suffering, that I could understand and decipher it, that I could make sense of it. I can't remember the last time a theater performance moved me so deeply, but I was glad (it sounds strange, I know) that it happened to me, and not just anywhere, but at the Hungarian Theater of Cluj.
Nona Rapotan: Luntrea lui Caron și ecumenismul lui Tompa [Caron's Boat and Tompa's Ecumenism], bookhub.ro, February 16, 2025
As was the case with Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, both for whom Tompa possesses a perfect decoding system, the same thing happened now on stage, in a very personal, not easily accessible interpretation, which imbues everything with the resonance of a requiem. During which I discover a relationship. In just a few words. Repetitive ones. With lots of "yes" and "no." Fosse's water here is an enclosed space, a sordid hospital ward from another century, whose central element is a bed, a symbol of a boat, a symbol of passion and death, a bed-coffin. The blurred, cobwebbed windows are the first to open the play of illusion, of mirroring, of opacity, of transparencies, like the textures of a cold, metallic material in which a silhouette is reflected, redundant as a shadow. Like an presence-absence. I find this production by Tompa Gabor to be truly one of his most profound confessions, one of the most complex and moving, polished at length, a chamber production similar to a precious and discreet jewel, which respects the intimacy of the act of creation, its laboratory, but also what is solitary there. As well as in torment, in prayer, in the abyss between me and myself, between me and the other, in the darkness of separation.
Marina Constantinescu: I Went with the Wind, România literară, no. 9/February 21, 2025
Jon Fosse is a writer who, as he himself admits, wants to write about "silence" and "wind." The two characters identify themselves in turn with silence and wind in a kind of adulation, in a kind of forgiving prayer. From a dialogue that is simple in essence (but not simplistic) between two random characters, Tompa Gábor, with a keen sense of empathy for the decadent sensibility of the age we live in, constructs a moving performance, unsettling as a whole, sober in content, delicately orchestrated, aesthetically accomplished.
Adrian Țion:Despre tăcere și dispariție - Én vagyok a szél / I am the Wind [About silence and disappearance - Én vagyok a szél / I am the Wind], liternet.ro, February 2025
In the most recent premiere of the Hungarian Theater of Cluj, Gábor Tompa transforms the strange, poetic, philosophical, and disturbing text Én vagyok a szél / I Am the Wind (2007) by Norwegian author Jan Fosse (Nobel Prize for Literature 2023) into a disturbing confession. Through a directorial and human exercise of remarkable power and clarity, a play that speaks in broad, vague terms, essentialized to the point of losing meaning, about the wind, the sea, and the port, about a man, another man, and a boat, in a time beyond the ages, a space beyond borders and an time beyond life and death, is transformed, in the vision of Tompa the artist and the man, into a here and now that is terribly painful, frighteningly precise, and brimming with hope and light.
Mihai Brezeanu: Celei care (nu) pleacă - Én vagyok a szél / I Am the Wind [To the one who (doesn't) leave - Én vagyok a szél / I Am the Wind], liternet.ro, February 2025
