“In Cádiz where I was born there was a place I loved called Palacio de la Moda. You’d go in and there were mirrors everywhere: on the walls, on the ceiling. You drowned in the spectacle of yourself.” José Troncoso is director of La Estampida, a Spanish theatre collective that burst onto the scene eight… Read more »
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 »
The average worker – aka the Spanish middle classes – is the focal point of a satirical stage production by the Madrid-based cooperative Teatro del Barrio. Masacre (Massacre) is an informative and incredulity-inducing theatre piece that covers some 100 years of Spanish economic history in just 80 minutes. The production features prominent Spanish actors Alberto San Juan… Read more »
Hanging on the branches of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s brilliant tragicomedy, this humourless Catalan adaptation of The Wild Duck (L’ànec salvatge) turned complex character-archetypes into filmic clichés. This 1884 play was an excellent choice by director Julio Manrique. Its predominant theme of blinded idealism and addiction to abstracts over human relationships, exemplified in the missionary… Read more »
Mario Gas, one of Spain’s best-known directors and Eduardo Mendoza, one of the country’s best-known authors, bring their brains together for this pop-up theatre production of Harold Pinter’s lesser-known black comedy The Hothouse (Invernadero), at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure until February 21st, 2016. This comic, tragic, macabre play is set in a government-approved institution where countless ‘residents’ are numbered rather… Read more »
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 »
