John Malkovich shows on stage the hell of a sexual predator

John Malkovich (Christopher, Illinois, 68 years old) likes challenges. The American actor, who began in the theater and established himself in the cinema, returns to Spain to get on stage and offer only two performances of ‘The Infernal Comedy. Confessions of a serial killer’. It will be at the Conde Duque Cultural Center in Madrid, within the Veranos de la Villa programme, this Thursday 11th and Friday 12th August. He will be accompanied on stage by two sopranos and a string orchestra.

The piece is based on the true story of Austrian Jack Unterweger, a serial killer who decided to leave his confession in writing in a surprising and poetic way. There will be two unique opportunities to enjoy the talent of one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation, star of legendary films such as ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, ‘In the Line of Fire’, ‘In a Place in the Heart’ or ‘Being John Malkovich’.

In the particular staging, two sopranos and a string ensemble will perform baroque scores and pieces by great composers such as Mozart, Gluck, Haydn, Vivaldi, Boccherini, Weber and Beethoven.

Unterweger was tried for the murder of a prostitute whom he suffocated with her own bra. The woman was 18 years old and he would be sentenced to life in prison. In prison he wrote some books that caught the attention of narrators such as Günter Grass and Elfriede Jelinek, future Nobel Prize winners for Literature who joined a movement to request the release of the murderer, arguing that his case would be an example of reintegration. When Unterweger regained his freedom he continued to write and came to work for Austrian public television. But he would be charged with smothering eleven other women to death. Arrested and imprisoned again, on his first night in prison he hanged himself in his cell.

Malkovich takes to the stage in Madrid after several failed attempts to present his ambitious and complex show ‘Just call me God’, about a twilight dictator, in Spain. He anticipates that he will leave room for improvisation and that, therefore, the two representations of him will not be identical.

Co-founder of the Steppenwolf theater company in Chicago, on stage he has starred in plays such as ‘Death of a Salesman’ or ‘The True West’. He has adapted works by Ernesto Sábato to the theater and is preparing another by Roberto Bolaño. Also active on television, he won an Emmy for “A Streetcar Named Desire” and played the Supreme Pontiff in Paolo Sorrentino’s series “The New Pope.”