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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull (1896), a quietly unsettling “comedy in four acts”, is pepped up in Argentinian director Daniel Veronese‘s abridged Spanish version, Los Hijos Se Han Dormido. The setting is rural Russia, where a group of ‘artists’ – some past their best, others frustrated with their future, a third lot not able to enjoy their… Read more »
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Àlex Rigola’s now slightly notorious MCBTH (Macbeth) (in Catalan) has already disturbed many audience members, though perhaps not in the way that the director intended. Peppered with visual references from ‘popular culture’, (although the term, like the culture, tends to be imposed upon us), there is a carefully cultivated cheapness about the play – from its… Read more »
David Mamet’s Oleanna, a Catalan version of which is on at Barcelona’s Teatre Romea until December 2nd, is an intense, clever and, at times, tough play that deals with issues of political correctness, and trust in authority figures and systems. The 1992 piece, the title of which refers to a utopian society invented in a 19th century… Read more »
