Triple tragedy at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure this last weekend with three Greek plays in Spanish! Oedipus Rex, Antigone (both Sophocles) and Medea (Euripides), directed by Alfredo Sanzol, Miguel del Arco and Andrés Lima respectively, were Teatro de la Abadia / Teatro de la Ciudad co-productions, though I suspect the funding was not evenly distributed. They had premiered… Read more »
Our memories act upon us, selecting events, experiences and emotions from our lives, apparently at random; they make meanings of them, whittling them into storylines or setting out rules for living. In his one-person stage play 887 the Canadian director, actor and playwright Robert Lepage unravels such narratives, questioning the characteristics that form our identities. “I call 887… Read more »
Further proof that LOOKING FOR DRAMA is part of the human condition comes directly from the mouth of acclaimed Argentine actor Ricardo Darín, probably the most famous Spanish-speaking thespian in the world. The actor of stage and screen (Hijo de la Novia (Son of the Bride) 2001, Truman 2015) reunites with accomplished actress Érica Rivas and director Norma… Read more »
Circle Mirror Transformation (Joc de Miralls), by the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Annie Baker, is a sweet, funny and quietly tragic little play that shines light on the lives of five individuals who take part in a theatre workshop for beginners in a local civic centre. The title refers to one of a series of quirky group… Read more »
All credit to this valiant Catalan-language production that brings freshness, focus and depth of character to Duncan Macmillan’s uncompromising play Pulmons (original title Lungs), a contemporary drama about a couple’s decision to have a baby, despite, or perhaps because of, impending environmental disaster. Macmillan demands that no props, sound or lighting effects, no ‘mime’, scene changes or intervals be… Read more »
El Misàntropo is a contemporary Spanish version of the classic play Le Misanthrope by 17th century French playwright Molière. A social satire with political implications, it deals with issues such as hypocrisy and love, sycophancy and plain speaking, and how far one should go to defend the truth. As Spanish theatre director Miguel del Arco has recognised, this… Read more »
In 2007, British actor Edward Petherbridge suffered a stroke that left him unable to play King Lear, a part that he had travelled to New Zealand to rehearse. Nevertheless, the actor was still able to recall every one of his lines. Of this serious incident he and Paul Hunter have created My Perfect Mind, a re-imagination… Read more »
It’s dark and something’s buzzing. Lights up, except they’re literally down, a big bar of them rests on a mass of old clothing… so much to choose from but who needs any of it? Nice to play dress up, at least, the idea has occurred to a small team of scavengers who wade through it all, selecting,… Read more »
There’s nothing quite like the shocking finale of a football match, between two teams that you do not habitually support, to leave you floundering in contradictory emotions. On the one hand, you don’t give a toss; on the other, you do – and usually for a whole bunch of irrational reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with football. The paradoxical… Read more »
I’m pretty much convinced that life is a series of boxes. Boxes that we’ve made ourselves out of cardboard clichés and fantasy cement. We sit in one box – that we’ve furnished, perhaps, in the orientalist style, or done sparse and modern with white walls, plastic furniture and a hormone-boosted plant from Ikea that will never die…. Read more »
