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 »
Tag: drama
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 »
WHAT’S ON? Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, dir. David Selvas
After the phenomenal success of A Dolls House (1879), Hedda Gabler (1891) by Norwegian master playwright Henrik Ibsen, didn’t go down that well with late 19th century audiences. Instead of overtly attacking the establishment, most particularly the crappy controlled lives of women, Hedda was considered an arrogant, power-crazed, unfeeling figure – a study in mental illness,… Read more »
REVIEW: Dispara / Agafa Tresor / Repeteix dir. Josep Maria Mestres
Seven interconnected mini-plays, selected and reshuffled from the 16 that comprise Shoot / Get Treasure / Repeat, bring coherence and resonance to Mark Ravenhill‘s satirical text, that explores the effects of war on our personal relationships and public lives. Directed by Josep Maria Mestres and staged at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure, Dispara / Agafa Tresor / Repeteix is an unflinching, funny and… Read more »
WHAT’S ON? Playing with Fire
More DRAMA this weekend as actor and director Julian Wickham makes his debut as a playwright. Playing With Fire puts the acquired skills of students from his Barcelona-based English Drama School to the test.
DRAMATIC EXIT pt.3: the full sweep
last week on DRAMATIC EXIT … In the sneak out we explored what to do when enough is enough and even a “goodbye” seems superfluous. In the scatter we covered how a public exit, executed with panache, can rattle up sad and sedentary members of society, and shine an interrogatory light on the more ridiculous… Read more »
DRAMATIC EXIT pt.2: the scatter
In the second of three imperative posts, I introduce a means of getting the hell out of there with the maximum fuss possible. This – very public – withdrawal comes into play when one wishes to fritter up one’s dispassionate, glum and/or anti-social companions on a bus or a subway journey: the type of folk with… Read more »
READ ABOUT IT: Catalan Drama
For my article based on interviews with Catalan bigwigs of theatre, Calixto Bieito and Toni Casares, published in Barcelona Metropolitan this month click here.