Tag: Barcelona

El cine (The Flick) by Annie Baker: life’s quiet dramas

This quietly brilliant play by American playwright Annie Baker makes for gripping viewing in an excellent Catalan adaptation directed by Marilia Samper. At over three hours long (with a short interval), El cine (The Flick) weaves slow magic from the mundane setting of a battered Massachusetts cinema in the early 2010s. It could be the… Read more »

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A ghost story (or 13) by Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson is the Lancashire-raised author of some three-dozen books, from the 1980’s classic Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit to the timely 12 Bytes (2021). Her latest Night Side of the River (October 2023) is a book of 13 original ghost stories told with a signature autobiographical twist. Technical innovation haunts the pieces, as… Read more »

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It Don’t Worry Me: the Anatomy of Theatre

In March 2016 propagandists, located (according to Google Analytics) in Saint Petersburg, infiltrated my blog lookingfordrama.com. ‘Vote Trump!’ They urged on a number of posts about Catalan theatre productions. Of course it’s nice to receive any comments, but it was disconcerting that having perused my online persona (courtesy of Facebook) my unwanted guests would have… Read more »

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The Vibrator Play: Power to the Passions

L'habitació del costat (In the Next Room)

This pitch-perfect Catalan production captures the comedy and charm of Sarah Ruhl’s provocative play In the Next Room / L’habitació del costat. Set in America in the late 19th century, at the time of Thomas Edison’s invention of electrical lighting, the pioneering Dr. Givings receives female patients complaining of ‘hysteria’, to whom he applies a recent… Read more »

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Cronología de las Bestias: the Lies that Bind Us

Cronología de las Bestias. Photo: Javier Naval

In the entertaining thriller play Cronología de las Bestias, written and directed by the Argentine Lautaro Perotti, Spanish actress Carmen Machi is unforgettable as Olvido, a beer-swilling mother with a strange fixation on the washing machine, whose missing son Beltrán shows up behind the sofa after a 12 year absence. Instantly recognised by his antsy aunt… Read more »

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Tebas Land: Tragedy with a Twist

In this fabulously intense and manipulative Spanish-language drama by Franco-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco, Martín, a young man who has murdered his father, becomes a material resource for S, an earnest if smug playwright-professor. The latter wants to make a play about parricide, a modern theatrical take on the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex; the former is… Read more »

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La Calavera de Connemara: Grave Matter

The proposition to exhume the remains of fascist dictator Francisco Franco after nearly half a decade resting in peace in a state-funded mausoleum, puts a grave twist on Martin McDonagh’s A Skull in Connemara that makes a return to Barcelona’s La Villarroel in an energetic Catalan version directed by Iván Morales. Set in the district… Read more »

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Frankenstein: Shocked into Life and Looking for Love

Joel Joan is the monster in Frankenstein.

In this entertaining homage to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a team of Catalan multidisciplinary creators have adjusted the plot of the 1818 original to present an atmospheric if ‘diet’ version of the tale. A Wagneresque soundtrack and enigmatic images of the natural world provide the scenery for the story of mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein, who, in… Read more »

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