In his work for the Romanian stage, Gârbea has primarily reworked motifs from Anton Chekhov, Ion Luca Caragiale, Gustave Flaubert, Costache Negruzzi, and various other of his predecessors, addressing contemporary realities.
[14] Active as a theater critic and chronicler,[1] as well as a contract bridge popularizer,[3][15] he later had permanent columns in Luceafărul (1990–1995, and again 1998–2001), ArtPanorama (1997–1998), Scena (1998–2001), Monitorul de Iași (1998–1999), Contemporanul (1999–2001), Săptămâna Financiară (after 2005)[5] and the Craiova-based literary magazine Ramuri.
[17] He was also among the first Romanian authors to publish fiction in the new wave of lifestyle magazines, being an early contributor to the local version of Playboy (together with George Cușnarencu, Răzvan Petrescu, and Jean Lorin Sterian).
[5] His contributions in this field include translations and adaptations of plays by Anton Chekhov (The Cherry Orchard), Pierre Corneille (L'Illusion comique), Dario Fo (We Won't Pay!
[5] In March 2005, as head of the Bucharest Association of Writers, he set up the Romanian version of France's literary festival Le Printemps des Poètes ("Poets' Spring", known locally as Primăvara poeților).
In an early interview with Gardianul daily, he spoke of the editorial staff as having displayed "negligence", and noted that replacing the panel of editors was one of the sanctions being considered, while also stating that he felt none of them were "100% responsible" for the incident.
[26] In late 2007, he participated with fellow writers Doina Ruști and Liviu Ioan Stoiciu in a children's literature project initiated by Editura Paralela 45, which involved rewriting a series of fairy tales in Romanian folklore and Christian mythology.
[16] In her critical overview of Gârbea's contributions, Observator Cultural chronicler Bianca Burţa-Cernat describes him as one among the lesser authors of the 1990s generation, alongside Dan-Silviu Boerescu and Mihail Gălățanu.
[36] At the same core level, Diaconu identifies the author's debt to Eugène Ionesco, while also judging his manner of "mixing eras, languages, writings, characters or historical figures, fiction and document" to echo the techniques of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.
[38] Critic Dumitru Ungureanu sees this cultural echo as having been filtered by the style of Radu Albala, one of the authors to have been most inspired by the "matein" narratives, and concludes that the lineage places Gârbea on the same level as Cărtărescu and Florin Șlapac.
[38] According to his generation colleague, essayist Dan-Silviu Boerescu, Gârbea "cannot part with the speculative charm of a brain given to bookish games", but closely follows a realistic tradition with his "sarcastic analysis of [...] all everyday weakness.
[39] In Nelega's view, Gârbea, "one of the truly alive writers of his time", was among the few debuting local playwrights to have their works staged by prominent Romanian directors—Alexandru Darie, Alexandru Hausvater, and Gavril Pinte.
Aretzu sees him as "one of the most ubiquitous authors in present-day literature, [...] gifted with a great availability in processing reality",[8] while critic and academic Nicolae Oprea believes him to be "the most prolific" among the Bucharest-based group formed in the 1990s.
[2] She polemically connects the critical appreciation with his status as a "good colleague" and "devoted shadow" of other writers, noting that Gârbea's notoriety is ensured by a promotional system with "all the stakes" and "all the pulleys", as well as by "the argument of prolificity", but that these attributes also surpass his actual value.
[2] Usually assigned by their author the name of "texts", in preference over "plays",[13][36][37] several among Gârbea's earliest works for the stage are Postmodern reworkings of classical motifs, fashioned into new statements about the limits of literature.
[37] In Doamna Bovary sînt ceilalți, the theme and protagonists are borrowed from Gustave Flaubert's 1857 novel, reused by the author to make a statement about drama itself[36] and combined with elements from Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit.
[7] In addition to such themes, Mircea A. Diaconu sees Gârbea's reflection on the conflict between history and fiction as personified by the lead character in Stăpânul tăcerii: the Egyptian god Thoth, who bestows the gift of language on man, is depicted as "the prototype of traitors.
[9] Historiographer and critic Ruxandra Cesereanu connects the outcome with a notoriously violent episode in Romania's communist history, the brainwashing experiment carried out by the Securitate in Pitești Prison: "The paradox and moral-antimoral of Horia Gârbea's play is that the victim [...] proves himself tougher, more of an executioner, than his torturer.
[7] The protagonist, a treacherous Moldavian boyar by the name of Moţoc, uses a discourse rich in political imagery, and towards the end of the play reveals himself as an alter ego of communist theorist Karl Marx.
[7] Nelega is critical of the text, arguing that it "does not surpass the gratuitousness of petty pokes" and is "more burlesque than absurd", concluding: "I fear that Gârbea did not know how to end his play and quickly fabricated, deus ex machina, the similitude of a profound sense where there was nothing.
"[7] The three-character comedy and satire Cafeaua domnului Ministru, seen by poet and literary chronicler Emil Mladin as one "of morals",[42] turns its attention to Romania's political scene, showing the stormy encounter between a matron, a female secretary and a politician.
[8] The plot, deemed "to die for" by Galaicu-Păun,[34] notably shows writer and former inmate Aldu Rădulescu seducing literary chronicler Alteea Fleciu, as revenge for a negative review of his work.
"[4] In Artezu's account, those parts of Căderea Bastiliei in which Gârbea discusses the annual competition for literary prizes offer evidence both a "captivating" humorous focus on everyday occurrences and an "innocent cynicism, characteristic for the author".
[12] The same commentator identifies in the stories several allusions, homages or intertextual borrowings, from the "semiotic games" of Umberto Eco to a "landscape of luxuriant vegetation" characteristic for the Latin American Boom writers.
"[4] Nicolae Oprea noted in particular the reworking of a motif borrowed from Sibiu Circle poet Ştefan Augustin Doinaş and his Mistreţul cu colţi de argint: the "prince from the Levant", whom Gârbea transfers into the destitute world of garbage collectors.
dimineaţa pe la ora patru pe nemâncate îi aduna prinţul-poet pe gunoieri nu mai făcea apelul erau toţi şi îi întreba bă voi ziceţi că omu-i o lumină da moşule ziceau aia este bine scrâşnea prinţul-poet mai mult prinţ vai de poezia lui bine marş la treabă şi plecau să măture ce să facă[13] morning round four on an empty stomach the prince-poet would gather the garbage men he wouldn't call them out they were all there and would ask them you people say that man is a light yes dude they said that's what man is fine gnashed the prince-poet or rather just prince his sorry poetry fine shoo back to work and they started sweeping what else could they do Oprea also highlighted ironic and dismissive borrowings from Romania's national poet Mihai Eminescu, and from poets laureate such as Octavian Goga and Vasile Alecsandri, as well as an actual lineage from the black humor of 1930s Surrealists.
[13] Also according to Oprea, such texts "are raised as collages of everyday images and bookish suggestions, well tied to each other, to the point where their articulation into colloquial speech puts to use the technique of reabsorbing the dramatic element and the narrative nucleus of balladesque nature into the sphere of pure lyricism.
The setting is a fictional theater in provincial Călăraşi, deriving its name from the Getic ruler Dromichaetes, and the protagonists, Cosmin Ciotloş notes, are composite portrayals rather than the "masked" characters of Căderea Bastiliei.
[28] According to Daniel Cristea-Enache, Gârbea generally and willingly limited the scope of his investigation to canonical and urbane literary realism, avoiding allegorical styles such as Onirism: "the author is not interested in symbolic codification, in the refraction of the characters and their fictional world; but, quite the contrary, in the points and lines at which literature intersects with social life.
[32] The texts received criticism from the Armenian Romanian community's Ararat journal: it specifically called "disinformation" the fragments which refer to Azerbaijan's Christian past, and expressed concern over Gârbea's claim that Heydar Aliyev was "a civilizing providential hero".