Place yourself in Belfast in 2009. Two middle-aged Nordies meet in a pub in the jittery presence of a Polish barman. Their lives are linked by a bomb that one threw there, in 1974, at the height of The Troubles. It blew 6 men up, some literally to bits – one of them was the… Read more »
If you’re passing the Palau de la Virreina on the Rambles or staring up at any of the lampposts around Barcelona, you’ll see some rather optically-challenging ads for a summer event called the Grec, an annual performing arts festival of some 141 acts, plus discussions and other activities that go on through July. Its name derives from the expansive amphitheatre a bit up… Read more »
A satirical theatre production at Madrid’s Teatro del Barrio (6th April – 22nd June 2016) interrogates the role and reputation of the King of Spain as the country’s head of state and its military. The monarch in play is the now 78-year-old Juan Carlos I, who first set foot in Spain at the age of 10,… Read more »
The extraordinary court encounter between the Spanish judge Pablo Ruz and the Partido Popular politician Luis Bárcenas Gutiérrez has been made into an award-winning, triple Goya-nominated film directed by David Ilundáin. In 2013, Bárcenas, of the right-wing ‘People’s Party’, was brought before judge Ruz for a second time and admitted to running a slush fund for nearly two decades while holding the… Read more »
Mario Gas, one of Spain’s best-known directors and Eduardo Mendoza, one of the country’s best-known authors, bring their brains together for this pop-up theatre production of Harold Pinter’s lesser-known black comedy The Hothouse (Invernadero), at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure until February 21st, 2016. This comic, tragic, macabre play is set in a government-approved institution where countless ‘residents’ are numbered rather… Read more »
The Italian director Ettore Scola died last month. Probably the most internationally famous of his films was Una Giornata Particolare (A Special Day), a domestic love story starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, set on the occasion of Adolf Hitler’s visit to Benito Mussolini’s Rome in 1938. The film was released in 1977, and won a Golden Globe and was nominated… Read more »
A middle-aged, peroxide blonde Helen of Troy staggers into a neon-lit bar and pours herself a drink. So begins the Spanish-language play Juicio a una Zorra, a powerful and passionate monologue delivered by acclaimed actress Carmen Machi (Hable con Ella, Abrazos Rotos), on at Teatre Goya (Barcelona) from 19th – 31st January 2016. Director Miguel Del Arco wrote the piece to give… Read more »
Nàufrags is a piece of visual / puppet theatre on the theme of ‘the shipwrecked’, created by the film and stage director Lluís Danés. The last instalment in Mercat de les Flors’ innovative performance cycle Oh! Poètiques de la Il.lusió is a visually and atmospherically accomplished piece, engineered to disturb its audience with a range of cinematic devices. Billowing black bin bags, mood lighting… Read more »
Oh-my-gosh, it was indeed a Happy New Year! thanks to this blinding Catalan production of Marits i Mullers. Director Àlex Rigola’s sweet, slick, highly inventive and immensely enjoyable theatrical adaptation of Woody Allen’s 1992 movie, Husbands and Wives, was not only better than the original – kinda, but notably generous to the public. It made me think of… Read more »
Almost all hope of gender intrigue dissolved in the outdated absurdity and odd ‘masculinity’ of this Catalan-language version of a female King Lear (Rei Lear)! This not very Christmassy Shakespearean tragedy, about an old king flattered and then betrayed by his daughters, is glum enough as it is – but this was indeed a most disheartening production!… Read more »
