The director, together with dramaturgs Miklós H. Vecsei and Nikolett Németh, and the actors of the Cluj company, created a completely original performance, the text and lines of which are mainly based on the recollections in the preserved diary of Janovics. This is Attila Vidnyánszky Jr.'s third staging at the Cluj-based Hungarian company: after Romeo and Juliet, as well as the production of Young Barbarians, inspired by the lives of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, which is still in the repertoire, he dazzles a section of the audience that is not afraid of fresh, sometimes chaotic, but nevertheless coherent productions that are not without their "form-breaking" solutions.

The team puts on a performance that is memorable not only for its themes but also for its originality as a whole, its excellent acting, striking visuals, choreography and music. It is worth recalling one of the many beautiful moments, when Uncle Méry, the theatre's fireman (played by József Bíró, an excellent actor), shows the audience a photograph, probably taken in 1920, of the members of the Hungarian company in Cluj looking into the camera with Janovics: on the edge of the picture is a Romanian text: 'Opera din Cluj, 1919'.

Judit Kiss: Janovics, azaz egy feledésbe merülő kolozsvári magyar történet színpadi feltámasztása [Janovics, or the theatrical resurrection of a forgotten Hungarian story from Cluj], Kronika online

The bewildering variety of artistic means proposed by Vidnyánszky Jr. includes acting in various styles drawing on multiple currents of practice and thought, music that is ever-present and comprehensive (the original score is by Dávid Mester), and five-and-a-half-star quality of physical and gestural expression (choreography: István Berecz). What and how it is expressed, sung, and danced (also) in Janovics is a great tribute to the people and times evoked.

Mihai Brezeanu:  Moștenirea lui Janovics pentru Cluj [Janovics' legacy to Cluj], liternet.ro, June 2025

I wasn't expecting such a powerful show, one that stays with you long after it's over. I knew who Janovics Jenő was, especially about his role in cinema and that, indirectly, we owe Michael Curtiz's Casablanca to him (yes, Kertész, to be precise). As for his role in theater, no one questions it. He was the first to innovate by using film projections when he directed Madách's text, The Tragedy of Man. It may be pompous to say that he devoted his life to art and theater, but practically speaking, that is what he did, considering that he used his fortune for artistic purposes. He was not from Transylvania, but in order to embrace his Hungarian destiny, he declared himself to be Transylvanian (in a letter from 1933 to the Theater Association). All this is said in the show at the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj.

Anca Mureșan:  Action aaand cut! Janovics și oglinzile istoriei [Action aaand cut! Janovics and the mirrors of history], liternet.ro, October 2024

Vidnyánszky Attila Jr.'s show is not intended to be, nor is it, biographical in the classic sense of the term. Nor is it documentary theater, as it might seem at first glance. The director reserves the freedom to play, intelligently and inspirationally, with both of these structures, only to abandon them nonchalantly. He also abandons the strictly biographical thread to create a world of images and narrative signs, a bygone world, focused on two main modules, which are distributed in the two parts of the three-hour show: the beginnings of cinema in Cluj and the last performance of Hamlet on September 30, 1919.

Adrian Țion: Energiile spectacolului-colaj [The Energies of a Collage Performance], liternet.ro, November 2024

"I see the Janovics production as an experiment, as it will start where Young Barbarians ended. It's like the second part of a series, a chain link or rather a junction. As with Barbarians, Janovics is not a biographical production, it tries to get as far away from the confines of the theatre as possible, but unlike Barbarians, our aim was to recount the most significant period of the protagonist's life in a "new form", in the Janovics way."

Attila Vidnyánszky jr. – director of performance