It often happens that the world turns in a way you don't quite understand, and when the curtain falls on a show, you find yourself leaving in silence and with your head down from an audience where everyone is giving ovations. So it was on Thursday night, as I left the opening of the TNC season after seeing Ànima, this year's big bet from our primary public theatrical institution; in addition to hearing a musical in Catalan at the Nacional again after many years of absence, which is to be celebrated, one arrived at the theater with a certain pride, given that our country ---and more specifically, its capital--- still lives with the anomaly of having excellent musical producers and artists born in the tribe, but who can only afford a show like this in Spanish. It was necessary for a public theater to amend this abnormality, and I congratulate the TNC for assuming the financial loss that such a gesture entails.
But, since we were there and the occasion deserved it, the TNC could have devised a show far from the mainstream, with a certain artistic risk and, above all, that connected the richness of the genre with the country's imaginary to offer a great local piece with universalist pretensions (the example of Mar i Cel, which will soon end its stage life, is particularly appropriate here). But I dare to say that the show by Blanca Bardagil, Oriol Burés, Víctor G. Casademunt, and Marc Gómez does not meet any of these requirements. And the most fucked up thing is that Ànima has a group of top-notch actor-singers and musicians, like our Paula Malia (an actress who could defend any score on a Broadway stage). But good intentions are not enough to save a very old show, with an obvious argumentative and musical mediocrity, and which has very little that is national about it.
What is most uncomfortable about Ànima, and I would say that the fact is a symptom of the present, is to patent how such a young team has managed to end up giving birth to an essentially antiquated show. The fact (objective, believe me) begins with a score, by Adrià Barbosa and Abel Garriga, written as correctly as it proceeds, but with an absolutely outdated aesthetic of a semi-jazz and Disney musical. Now that the Yankees have long since begun to import the tics of urban music to their stages (the most notorious case being that of Lin-Manuel Miranda and his school), it is surprising that Ànima is guided by a rather nineties aesthetic (of the last century). But, even in these terms, the sound does not quite flow, because any musical must have hits that end up in the memory of the spectator's eardrum and here, ironically, what the listener remembers most are comic moments where the actors... speak!
The dramaturgy of Ànima doesn't help much either. Let's say it frankly: at home we always are and will be in favor of importing narratives from the Yankees... but can't we really adapt any feminist personal overcoming story based on our theatrical or novelistic heritage? Is it necessary to go abroad to look for a similar narrative, when at home we have one under every stone? This servant is not an apologist for botifarra amb seques and, of course, a Catalan playwright can (and should) delve into the story of a Syrian activist or a Japanese mythological being if this is the vehicle that best suits what he wants to think and communicate to the viewer. But going to fish for a prototypical story of overcoming towards the United States (based, by the way, on a philosophically disastrous idea like "if you want, you can", which life never tires of contradicting in abundance) when you have plenty at home seems to me extremely provincial.
I write all this because of the musical Ànima precisely because I deeply respect its creators and artists, and it pains me physically, as I know very well the titanic effort involved in putting on a show of this magnitude. I don't do it because I'm a grumpy old man or because I like to contradict for the sake of it or leave shows with a wrinkled nose, but because I think the occasion of a season premier at the TNC deserved a defiant punch on the table. This, I insist ad nauseam, is not the responsibility of the creators of a work that, surely, will have sold-out tickets and the unanimous acclaim of musical theater critics (this is also one of the symptoms of the present, that we do everything well and that no one offers any amendment). The responsibility lies with a theater that should have supported these assets to produce a unique show that deserved to be long-lasting.
I hope I screw up and am wrong, I say it very sincerely, but I don't think this will be the case with Ànima. Because unfortunately, wanting things a lot is not enough. And I apologize for the inconvenience.