A Stormy Night

A Stormy Night (Romanian: O noapte furtunoasă, originally O noapte furtunoasă sau Numĕrul 9) is an 1878 comedy play by Ion Luca Caragiale, and widely seen as a major accomplishment in modern Romanian humor. It was Caragiale's debut as a dramatist, at age 26, after a period of writing for various newspapers—the same age and profession as those associated with the play's protagonist, Rică Venturiano. The work combines elements of farce, sex comedy, and political satire, being a public gesture whereby Caragiale emphasized his break with Romanian liberalism, which was at the time dominant in local political culture. Set in Dealul Spirii neighborhood (mahala), south-central Bucharest, A Stormy Night focuses on the nighttime intrusion of Venturiano, a liberal demagogue employed as a government clerk, into the townhouse of Dumitrache Titircă, embodying the more commercially successful layers of the liberal-voting petty bourgeoisie. The latter's home is revealed to be the scene of an adulterous affair between his wife, Veta, and his assistant, Chiriac—though Caragiale scholars remain divided as to whether Dumitrache is entirely oblivious or a willing cuckold.

The play is rich with symbolism and comedy of language, aligned with the aesthetic values promoted by Junimea literary society and its conservative counterculture. Through Venturiano's lines, the author parodies republicanism and Romantic nationalism, while also taking on, and rendering ridicule, the Latinate spelling norms favored by extreme liberals; through Titircă and his henchmen, he settles scores with the Civic Guard, which he had come to see as a parasitical institution of the liberals' spoils system; through Veta and her sister Zița, he mocks the romantic-themed daydreaming and kitsch aspirations of middle-class housewives. A Stormy Night was first performed at the National Theater Bucharest, in January 1879, becoming extremely successful on its premiere. The original text, used for that production, had four acts; it was later shortened and modified by Caragiale (who probably maintained some of the changes operated, without his consent, by manager Ion Ghica).

Both the original version and the definitive text were topics of enduring controversy, which began violently, on the play's second performance, when the Civic Guard sought Caragiale to have him beaten up; more lenient liberals preferred to ignore it as a harmless farce, while others, though commending Caragiale for his talent, expressed the view that his social critique was exaggerated, unfair, or untimely. The play charmed conservative opinion-makers, including Titu Maiorescu and Mihai Eminescu, and was later also upheld as a masterpiece by the Marxist school of criticism. A Stormy Night remained a staple of Romanian theater, with productions overseen by Caragiale down to his death in 1912; at the time, he was working on a sequel that also mixed in characters from his other major comedy, O scrisoare pierdută, and broadened the scope by also attacking conservatives. His posterity saw a split between "sociological" (and generally Marxist) productions of the play, as recommended by Sică Alexandrescu, and experimental versions by Alexa Visarion, Sorana Coroamă-Stanca, and Mihai Măniuțiu; both visions are occasionally opposed by "innocent" readings of the text, which emphasize the farcical elements.

A Stormy Night inspired a 1930s opéra bouffe by Paul Constantinescu, a 1942 film by Jean Georgescu, and various fragments of prose by Camil Petrescu. The play is heavily reliant on language humor, and as such notoriously difficult to translate—adaptations such as the French one, penned in the 1950s by Eugène Ionesco, include a large dose of lexical inventiveness. The Romanian communist regime encouraged publications and productions of the play throughout the Eastern Bloc and the developing world, where it has acquired a cult following. It was repeatedly used for stagings in Hungarian, done either in Hungary or among the Hungarian Romanian community—it was directed on two occasions by Gábor Tompa, who adopted a median position between experimentalism and the "innocent" repertoire.