Don't let the curtain down! Resist, theater
Juan Diego Botto, Ana Belén, Carmen Machi, Sílvia Munt, Andrés Lima, Javier Gutiérrez, Vicky Luengo, Lluís Homar, Carlota Subirós, Alfredo Sanzol… The theater and the theater owners resist Y they have no intention of leaving the forum . So let's not abandon them, because they need us as much as we need them.
January brought the curtain down with the worst news for those of us who love the stage: the closure of the Pavón Kamikaze Theater, which left us orphans of that verbose and transparent intensity that the kamikazes had made a house brand of.
We stay overnight without the familiarity of that Lavapiés roof where so happy we have become. But don't worry, despite the state of permanent exceptionality, the rigorous distance and the claws of the coronavirus, the theater and the theater owners resist and they have no intention of leaving the forum. So let's not abandon them, because they need us as much as we need them..
'A moonless night'
Among the most anticipated works of the season is a moonless night , which joins again the Juan Diego Botto –actor and author– with the Sergio Peris-Mencheta director, reissuing the creative tandem of An invisible piece of this world , with which they won several Max awards in 2014. This time the protagonist of the story is Federico García Lorca, who speaks to us with his words (collected from interviews, articles and conferences) about creation, life, theater, death, its roots, success, fear, fascism, censorship, freedom, passion, its time..., but also about our own time, which is projected like a mirror on (and from) that giant that was and continues to be Lorca.
In a moonless night we see him write and die, but also love Rafael Rodriguez Rapun or inaugurate the library of his town, Fuente Vaqueros, where he says that: “If I were hungry and helpless in the street, I wouldn't ask for bread, but half a loaf and a book”. All the spectators and critics who have been able to see it agree on one word: emotion . He will not arrive in Madrid until on June 17 at the Spanish Theater, where he will spend about a month, but first he has a long and exhaustive tour that will take him to Bilbao (February 5, 6 and 7), Seville (February 20 and 21), Granada (13 and 14), León (March 4), Segovia (5 and March 6 at the Juan Bravo Theatre), Valencia (April 24 and 25), Alicante (May 2 at the Principal)..., among other cities that will be lucky enough to host this piece that can sweep the next Max.
'A moonless night'
From February 11 to 14 at the Main Theater of Valencia premieres eve vs eve , starring Ana Belén, whom we had not seen on stage since 2016 with the Medea of Jose Carlos Plaza , her fetish director. However, this time the one who directs it is a woman, Silvia Munt , and with a role that fits her charisma like a glove, that of the mature actress of the classic naked eve , by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
In the Pau Miro adaptation , halfway between acid comedy and psychological thriller, two actresses from two different generations must play the same character. In this coincidence two ways of understanding life and profession collide, but the two women behave and live as rivals, not as enemies, with which Miró has tried to correct some misogynistic tics of the original version. What he does retain from the black and white film is the irony of the mature artist and her corrosive gaze on the world. Like when Bette Davis/Ana Belén signs an autograph for the aspiring actress she, apparently harmless and tells him: “ Life is the rehearsal of a play that will never be released ”. Zasca! What are they going to tell Ana Belén that she has made more than forty films, some thirty plays and thirty-five albums?
Another of her proper names in 2021 (and it has been for a few years now) is that of the director Andres Lima . His great documentary play, Prostitution , with Carmen Machi, Nathalie Poza and Carolina Yuste, returns to Madrid, to Matadero , from March 12 to April 4. A portentous show where chills, fury and laughter coexist, that no one should miss.
In addition, Lima has recently launched beginners , an adaptation of Carver's story, What are we talking about when we talk about love?, starring that incredible normal man who is Javier Gutiérrez, and the great discovery of 2020, the series' researcher Riot gear, Vicky Luengo . As the author of the adaptation explains, John Cavestany , "our proposal wants to be a complete immersion in the recurring elements of the Carver universe : relationships, love and alcohol as refuges but also as deadly weapons”. You can see it in Teatro Principal de Sevilla on February 26 and 27; in Valencia, from April 9 to 11; in Malaga on May 29 … In fact, a long tour awaits him.
'Prostitution'
In Madrid, the National Drama Center replaces another of Andrés Lima's hits: Shock (The Condor and the Puma) , which takes a theatrical look at our recent history based on The shock doctrine , of Naomi Klein . Your thesis of him? That neoliberalism has managed to advance like a steamroller in our lives thanks to the daze and vulnerability in which each of the crises of recent decades has left us.
Shock (The Condor and the Puma)
Also in April, while recovering the first part in the Valle Inclan Theater , comes the long-awaited sequel to it, Shock 2 (The Storm and the War) , written by Albert Boronat, Juan Cavestany, Andres Lima, and Juan Mayorga . The new montage, as its director explained in El País, “will start from the coronavirus, which is an element that meets the perfect conditions for shock. It is so global that it seems to come from nowhere. China and the United States accused each other, but it doesn't matter if it is provoked or who benefits: the great shock is served, and it is strong enough to change the world's course. The bravest spectators will be able to do a marathon that allows them to see the two “shocks” on the same day: one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.
Continuing with the political theater, The Lord Serrano Group , one of the most international Catalan companies, presents its reflection on post-truth at the Teatre Lliure with themountain . A work that combines the first expedition to Everest, whose success is still uncertain today, with Orson Welles sowing panic on his radio program War of the Worlds ; a fake news website; a drone scanning the public; lots of snow; mobile screens; fragmented images; and Vladimir Putin lecturing satisfied on trust and truth.** On February 12 it can be seen in Bilbao; in Barcelona from March 17 to 28, and in Valencia on May 21 and 22**.
Shock 2 (The Storm and the War)
In the National Theater of Catalonia (TNC) Carlota Subirós dares again to plunge into the twilight eroticism of Tennessee Williams with The night of the iguana , with some wonderful Joan Carreras and Nora Navas. Since February 11.
In addition, the TNC will present in May the farewell of Xavier Alberti as director of this institution with The Emperadriu del Paral·lel, a text that plunges into the bohemian nightlife of the thirties written by Lluisa Cunille , that she will thus become the first living Catalan author to premiere in the great room of this institution.
Cunillé places the work between the end of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the proclamation of the Second Republic, at that effervescent moment – to the rhythm of couplets, political proclamations and tavern witticisms – in which Alejandro Lerroux was the emperor of Parallel, and his Empress Mrs. Palmira Picard, the most beloved and acclaimed artist of the time. A diva who has just died and to whom her lovers and admirers will pay tribute , among others, the journalist who writes his obituary ( Pere Arquillue ) and an out-of-work silent movie pianist ( Silvia Marso).
By the same director, Xavier Albertí, it will be possible to see in the Madrid Comedy Theater , headquarters of the National Classical Theater Company, the constant prince of Calderon de la Barca. A version starring Lluís Homar (from February 17 to April 11), which is considered the great work of the author of Life is a dream. A text that led Goethe to say in 1804, in a letter to Schiller, that if all the poetry in the world disappeared, it would be possible to reconstruct it on the basis of the constant prince.
comedy theater
And if some leave Xavier Albertí of the TNC ), others like Alfredo Sanzol are almost landing in the National Drama Center, so there is great expectation for the premiere of The bar that swallowed all Spaniards , written and directed by himself. This work tells the story of Jorge Arizmendi , a priest from Navarre who in 1963, at the age of thirty-three, decides to change his life, leave the priesthood, and travel to the United States to learn English and marketing, although he ends up on a ranch in Texas. A plot that has great similarities with the real life of the father of Sanzol . We can see it at the Valle Inclán Theater in Madrid between February 12 and April 4, but also in Seville (April 9 and 10), Valencia (April 23 to 25), in Barcelona (April 28 to 2 May) and in Pamplona (7 and 8 May).