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 »
Oh-my-gosh, it was indeed a Happy New Year! thanks to this blinding Catalan production of Marits i Mullers. Director Àlex Rigola’s sweet, slick, highly inventive and immensely enjoyable theatrical adaptation of Woody Allen’s 1992 movie, Husbands and Wives, was not only better than the original – kinda, but notably generous to the public. It made me think of… 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 »
Further proof that LOOKING FOR DRAMA is part of the human condition comes directly from the mouth of acclaimed Argentine actor Ricardo Darín, probably the most famous Spanish-speaking thespian in the world. The actor of stage and screen (Hijo de la Novia (Son of the Bride) 2001, Truman 2015) reunites with accomplished actress Érica Rivas and director Norma… Read more »
In 2007, British actor Edward Petherbridge suffered a stroke that left him unable to play King Lear, a part that he had travelled to New Zealand to rehearse. Nevertheless, the actor was still able to recall every one of his lines. Of this serious incident he and Paul Hunter have created My Perfect Mind, a re-imagination… Read more »
It’s dark and something’s buzzing. Lights up, except they’re literally down, a big bar of them rests on a mass of old clothing… so much to choose from but who needs any of it? Nice to play dress up, at least, the idea has occurred to a small team of scavengers who wade through it all, selecting,… Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
