Love and everything else at La Villarroel

At La Villarroel, love stories work well. After the success of L'illa deserta, with Miki Esparbé and Maria Rodríguez, the theater returns with Love, love, love, on display until December 3. The Beatles, as the title suggests, sneak in more than once into a room that is about to start dancing to accompany actors Laia Marull and David Selvas, both playing hippies and parents, with Clara de Ramon and Marc Bosch having to suffer them as children.

Sometimes, it's good for theater to allow something as simple as sitting in an armchair and letting oneself go for an hour and a bit, relaxing with stories that won't fix the world but make one smile. Perhaps the strange thing is that this is surprising. Love, love, love achieves this by gracefully reviewing the good and bad of a couple throughout their entire lives. Its director, Julio Manrique, says that theater is not the place for sermons, but it must serve to ask questions. And it does so at La Villarroel without tiring while one laughs with characters who manage to be liked despite their selfishness.

Kenneth and Sandra's journey is not a bed of roses, as it never is, but it is neither idealized nor overly dramatized; simply, what often happens, happens. Love at first sight, recklessness, boredom, lies... These ups and downs intertwine with the decades of the United Kingdom in which the play is set, starting in the sixties, continuing in the nineties, and ending with the 2008 crisis. The transitions, in addition to changing the set design without boring, allow for refreshing the most prominent faces of each moment. A coincidence with another title on the billboard, La nostra ciutat at the Lliure, is the somewhat costumbrista setting of human stories in distant environments that could feel closer.

It is the story of a couple, but also that of their children, with a prominent role for Clara de Ramon, who was recently seen in Coralina, la serventa amorosa and one of last season's successes, Tots eren fills meus, with David Selvas as director. As it is presented, the parents love each other in an era when they can be carefree about everything, even family, and the children are left with what they leave behind. Perhaps the generational clash is the least consistent, even a bit empty. But the most important thing is to leave a good taste in the mouth, and Love, love, love achieves this, hitting the mark with the British band as an anthem. La Villarroel being full proves it day after day.