The year that ends in a few days has brought several good news to the Spanish scene. “It seems that, for the public, the pandemic has definitively ended and they have returned en masse to the theaters,” concluded Eduardo Vasco, director of the Spanish Theater, to explain the ‘There are no seats’ signs that the staging of ‘Luces de bohemia’, for many, the masterpiece of 20th century Spanish theater. The recovery of this title from Valle-Inclán is the symbol of one of the hallmarks that the current person in charge of this municipal space, the oldest stage in Europe, wants: the commitment to a theater of literary stature and repertoire; Because of this there seemed to be a generalized allergy in many public institutions – in some it still continues. The public seems to agree with the defenders of the repertoire. Related news standard Yes BALANCE OF 2024 A review of the calendar of the cultural unrest of 2024 Karina Sainz Borgo standard Yes BALANCE OF 2024 Yes, in his name. Critics choose the best and worst art events of these twelve months Various authors The massive influx to many theaters is, surely, the best of the year 2024, which leaves several extraordinary productions in the memory of spectators. First of all we have to talk about a dance show: ‘Afanador’ -premiered at the end of last year in Seville, but which has had its development this year-. It is a choreography by Marcos Morau, director of the La Veronal company, based on the universe of the Colombian photographer Ruvén Afanador; a fascinating work, a continuous chiaroscuro dotted with powerful, suggestive and hypnotic images. The National Classical Theater Company experienced turbulent moments, with the brave denunciation that the actress Marta Poveda made of irregularities in the remuneration of its director, Lluís Homar. The Ministry of Culture, which renewed his contract in April, had to rectify it just four months later and reached an agreement with the Catalan actor and director for the conclusion of his contract; Laila Ripoll has replaced him. But aside from office matters, several great works were seen on stage. Perhaps the most notable was ‘The Monster in the Gardens’, a little-known work by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, which was a new example of the enormous talent of the Basque director Iñaki Rikarte, one of the members of the Kulunka company. It is a production by the Young National Classical Theater Company, in which a comedy was transformed into a tragedy without distorting the text or betraying its spirit, and which was a theatrical artifact as fun as it was coherent, as entertaining as it was profound. Another unit of Inaem production, the National Dramatic Center, directed by Alfredo Sanzol, has also presented this year several outstanding and received productions, such as the one currently on stage at the Teatro Valle Inclán, ‘1936’ -by the always interesting Andrés Lima-; ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’, with Patricia López Arnaiz and Ana Wagener as the main spearheads; and, especially, ‘Nothing’, a stage adaptation of the transcendent novel by Carmen Laforet. “A memorable production,” titled ABC critic Diego Doncel, who added that the staging, directed by the young Beatriz Jaén based on a version by Joan Yago, was “three hours of great theater, of great dramatic breath, achieved based on a devilishly cutting and masterful rhythm, slow and seamless, that keeps us in good spirits. This year, the Spanish Theater stopped having Las Naves del Español, one of the most interesting spaces, under its wings. of the Spanish scene. But before letting go of his hand, he presented an enormously attractive production: ‘Vania x Vania’. In this performance, Pablo Remón took Chekhov’s play ‘Tío Vania’ as a starting point and made two versions of the text (both starring Javier Cámara): “A more theatrical one,” Remón explained, “which leaves more room for the imagination of the spectator, and a second in which I wanted there to be a sensation of a more conventional theater in a sense, but, at the same time, more cinematic.” At the end of last season, the Teatro de La Abadía hosted another very interesting proposal, although radically different, about a classic text, in this case, ‘King Lear’. William Shakespeare’s work served as a pretext for Andrea Jiménez, the playwright and performer of ‘Casting Lear’, to carry out an exercise that was both therapeutic – the relationship with her father – and theatrical. It was a performance in which the author faced a different actor every day, whose identity she did not know until the moment he came on stage; He, for his part, did not know the function or the text he had to say, which another actor pointed out to him through a earpiece. Diego Doncel said of the work that it was a “letter to the father” in which “Andrea Jiménez makes a relentless confession, there is rebellion, regrets, guilt and atonement for those guilt, there are reproaches and an infinite search for love.” Another very interesting – and in some aspects similar – theatrical experiment was ‘The Second Woman’, a show that premiered at the Grec in Barcelona and was later seen in Seville and Madrid. Created by the Australians Nat Randall and Anna Breckon, it posed a complicated challenge to its interpreter, in this case María Hervás. The approach was as follows: for 24 uninterrupted hours, the actress repeated the same scene a hundred times with a hundred different actors (like in ‘Casting Lear’, she didn’t know who she was going to meet), some professional and some not. The result was a fascinating mosaic of different situations based on the same falsilla, in a true ‘tour de force’ for the performer and for the audience who decided to see the entire show (only part of it could be seen). In the chapter of disappointments, we must refer to ‘Medusa’, one of the proposals of the Mérida Festival. It was not so much because of the show itself, but because it marked the return to the Spanish stage, after forty-six years of absence, of Victoria Abril, without a doubt one of the greatest figures of acting in Spain. Victoria Abril also canceled her planned tour after the premiere in Mérida; He simply cited “professional reasons.” From the Barcelona scene our critic, Sergi Doria, rescues four productions, the first, ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’, by David Mamet, directed by Àlex Rigola for his company, Heartbreak Hotel. “The text, stripped of scenographic features, enhances the rawness of what is being told,” wrote Doria, “: proximity turns the dramatic experience into a kind of ‘hui clos’ from which the viewer cannot escape.” Also notable is ‘L’imperatiu categòric’, with text and direction by Victoria Szpunberg; ‘Les mans’, by Llàtzer Garcia, directed by Sílvia Munt; and ‘Un matrimoni de Boston’, also by David Mamet, directed on this occasion by Josep Maria Mestres.
#Spanish #scene #knocks #disappointment
