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 »
Tag: Barcelona
What’s On? Richard MacDonald sculptures at Barcelona’s MEAM
Only in the heights of extreme physical pain can one feel relief from the constant emotional torture. I reckon that’s the whole point behind study, sport, really loud concerts and really long after-parties … and thank god (we hope) that something might do it! albeit for a very short time. In this spirit, Richard MacDonald creates small, life-sized and… Read more »
What’s On? A casa (Kabul) by Tony Kushner, dir. Mario Gas
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 »
REVIEW: Un Enemic del Poble, by Henrik Ibsen, dir. Miguel del Arco
As wikipedia tells it, so incensed was the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen at the public uproar following his new play Ghosts (a haunting account of a charitable mother whose son, a nice young man, goes bonkers having inherited syphilis from his slutty father), that he then wrote … … An Enemy of the People (1882), a… Read more »
REVIEW: El policía de las ratas – dir. Àlex Rigola / cia. Heartbreak Hotel
El policía de las ratas (Police Rat) is a wonderfully intense Spanish-language 2-man play directed by Àlex Rigola. It is based on the short story by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, “one of the most improbable international literary celebrities since William Burroughs”, according to the New York Times (who doesn’t give any further explanation). Possibly the… Read more »
WHAT’S ON? À la ville de … Barcelona, dir. Joan Ollé
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REVIEW: Un Trozo Invisible de Este Mundo by Juan Diego Botto
Teatre Lliure – Barcelona until September 29, 2013 The scene is set like a graveyard for dead baggage. A conveyor belt-cum-catwalk splits the stage, churning out luggage at varying speeds and quantities, some shrink-wrapped, some fancy, some battered and broken; without address tags or flight information, they seem mysteriously to vanish once they drop off… Read more »
WHAT’S ON? Tragèdies Romanes (Roman Tragedies) Toneelgroep Amsterdam
Teatre Lliure Montjuic, July 6th – 7th, 2013 With the Egyptian mess splashed all over the media, you don’t need to have read William Shakespeare’s triple-political-whammy of Roman tragedies, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, in any language, to feel a familiar sense of involvement yet distance, shock yet predictability, a sense of being… Read more »
REVIEW: L’Onada (The Wave) dir. Marc Montserrat Drukker
Since time immemorial emotional impact has meant more than logic. More exciting, more dynamic and more persuasive than its grumbling counterpart – that harps on about niggling things, like fact and detail, profundity and practicality – it is ‘impulse’ or, euphemistically speaking, ‘intuition’ that packs the punch behind instant big decisions. Thus, we spent thousands… Read more »
REVIEW: L’Estranger (L’Étranger – The Stranger) by Albert Camus, dir. Carles Alfaro
A surprisingly effective dramatization of Albert Camus‘ unsettling little novel L’Étranger (1942) (The Stranger in English, L’Estranger in Catalan) puts existential angst back on the table. Adapted by Rodolf Sirera and Carles Alfaro, who directed the play at the Gràcia Lliure theatre in Barcelona, L’Estranger is staged with perfect simplicity. The setting throughout the single-act performance is the prison cell from… Read more »