Catalunya escapist

They will return at the end of September, and they will do well. Escape Room 2 is a thrilling tour de force, for all audiences, a certain sophistication of the first part that in any case relies much more on the furious present. That is to say, it was already true that Escape Room played with politics and fascism, but this second part uses much more the connection with the post-procés public, familiar with Joel Joan's political vein, still traumatized and still eager for explanations.

Escape Room 2 doesn't give explanations, but it also doesn't ask permission to distribute left and right in such a way that the characters, the old and the new, are as familiar to us as a Sunday of cannelloni. This, with a dose of American thriller and video game. Joel Joan, I just point this out, has had to do many exercises at the Club Natació Barceloneta to demonstrate what he demonstrates in this show. It is no coincidence that the idea of escape made the scriptwriters think of the classic escapism of magicians like David Copperfield. Heart in hand.

Edu, Marina, Rai, Vicky and Max develop on stage this somewhat vaudevillian scavenger hunt that begins in a lost bar with apparent views of Barcelona. Bad couple vibes, friends who aren't so much, misunderstandings and loud secrets that little by little lead back to a spiral of mystery from which, of course, they won't be able to escape without overcoming a series of tests. The voice-over of Lluís Soler (and an automaton of a fairground wizard) will set the pace for challenges that, of course, very often or almost always will put them in an intimate compromise. Again, here the scriptwriters have given a new twist to the concept of the escape: who you certainly cannot escape from is yourself, from your unconfessable part, from what in theory your partner or friend did not know. And even less can you escape from what you still don't know about yourself.

The rhythm is frenetic, nobody loses attention, humor combines well (in a less bitter way than in the first part) with personal tragedy, and the scenographic resources are very well found if it's about traversing a long labyrinth within the reduced space of a stage. Joel Joan is made for these roles, and he knows it, and he nails them: the mature man who handles life badly, like everyone else, a middle-aged neurotic whose infinite frailties show through his ears. A bit like David, it cannot be denied, but not exactly David from Plats Bruts: he doesn't have as many contradictions as Edu, so many half-fulfilled desires, that very Catalan cynicism so dangerous and so unbearable. Edu is not a spoiled child, no: he is a normal citizen who exhibits his disappointments with everything that seemed important: love, friendship, money, values, the procés. The ridiculous scenes of the show seem to ridicule all of us, and understanding all of us as Catalonia. Edu is a bit all of us over the last ten years.

Since an escape room normally ends well and everyone goes home, obviously the scenes that could be gore never end up being so and the danger is barely perceived. Perhaps that would be the only criticism: where we run out of breath the most is with Edu's soaked scene, and the rest are race-against-time situations that perhaps do keep us in tension, but not in suffering. We know that everything will end well, and this perhaps makes the script become something too grotesque: there cannot be so many true thriller resources if deep down we all know it's a joke. We already knew it, right? But you could fool me a little more. I don't know. Yes, I do know: aware of this, the big circus act is in the middle of the play.

A recommendable show in every sense, entertaining, close, as close as the hallway of a house, deeply generational but trying to make (as animated films have been doing for a long time) teenagers forgive the constant references to the boomer world. It is achieved with a meritorious result, and the final aftertaste is that nothing is superfluous or missing. Perhaps, if anything is superfluous, it is what we have experienced in recent years in this part of the planet: a highly developed habit of complaint and lament but, at the same time, a manifest and chronic inability to escape.