‘L’origin del món’: the theater-sufflé of Lucía Calamaro

Both titles reflect, as a common trait, the gloomy side of life. In the first, mourning and the beneficial presence of the deceased in the lives of those who remain; in ‘The Origin of the World’, the depressive experience of a housewife and her relationship with her daughter, her mother and the psychoanalyst who treats her. Developed in three acts, the play begins with the protagonist, Alice, cloistered in her home. He clings to the refrigerator as the last refuge in the context of that depression that dwarfs his world. The patient’s need for introspection conditions her relationship with her daughter Queralt and collides with the incomprehension of her mother, an energetic and ironic grandmother who censures Alicia’s behavior.

There is a lot of philosophy in ‘The Origin of the World’. Refer to Uruguayan Onettithe writer who stayed in bed forever, to the Viennese Wittgenstein and Freud, or to the Germanic Heidegger. Transcendent quotes combined with observations as futile as they are verbose. For example, the “phenomenological” reflection of the protagonist’s mother about a kitchen cloth. This second installment of Calamaro suffers from the same facundia as ‘The Suspended Life’. A theater-sufflé in which the inflation of the speculations spoils the impact of the ideas that the playwright intends to express. The montage is long: its two hours are excessive, although the actresses, Alicia González Laá, Queralt Casasayas and the splendid Annabel Totusaus (in the role of the grandmother), try to revive a slow and repetitive text. Since the author is prone to maxims, perhaps she could apply to the scenario that of the conceptist Gracián: the good, if brief, is twice as good.