Seeing Nuria Espert on stage is always a gift. Even more so when she does it at the Teatre Romea, the first one she set foot in when she was only 13 years old. Now, more than 70 years later, she becomes Mencía, the undeniable spinner of the comings and goings of La isla del aire, a story of five women punished by pain and life. After last stepping on the Romea stage in early 2020 with Federico García Lorca's Romancero gitano, whose skins she has worn so many times, the actress from L'Hospitalet de Llobregat dares this time with a contemporary play, the first theatrical adaptation of the eponymous novel by writer Alejandro Palomas.
La isla del aire, published in 2005 and the first part of the trilogy El tiempo que nos une, had been on the Focus group's list of possibilities for some time, but the team to make it had not been found, with the need for a strong personality to act as the matriarch of a broken family. The proposal reached Mario Gas, who was looking for a text for Nuria Espert. "Palomas has given us absolute freedom, he hasn't dictated anything to us," says Gas. The novel already had a theatrical version made by the author himself, to which some changes have been added, always by consensus.
Nuria Espert, at 86 years old, is accompanied by four more actresses, with Vicky Peña and Teresa Vallicrosa in the role of daughters, and Miranda Gas and Candela Serrat in the role of granddaughters. "It's a chamber symphonic poem for five performers, with a very powerful and rich cast, a tribute to Espert, showing her the continuity of the profession," remarks Gas, who directs the veteran actress for the fourth time. The artistic team is completed by Sebastià Brosa (set design), Antonio Belart (costume design), Paco Ariza (lighting), Orestes Gas (original music), Álvaro Luna and Elvira Ruiz (video scene) and Núria Llunell (characterization).
Straddling dementia and lucidity, Espert's Mencía is in charge of tearing down the armor that they have all built to get by, based on jabs and that bitter and sincere affection that illuminates family intimacy. Not all characters are drawn equally, leaving aside Flavia (Teresa Vallicrosa), who barely appears, and simplifying Inés's (Candela Serrat) conflict, even tiptoeing around it. The pain that stands out most is that of Lía (Vicky Peña), tortured by having lost one of her three daughters, with her absence weighing in each of her appearances. She coexists with the complicity that Mencía weaves with one of her granddaughters, Bea (Miranda Gas), this being the relationship that provides the most relaxed and realistic moments in a plot full of melodrama.
La isla del aire, performed in Castilian, is set on an islet in front of Menorca, with a lighthouse that Mencía wants to visit again before she dies, without forgetting to put on her mink coat, whether it's cold or not. The excursion brings the five women together, giving words to the secrets that still remain to be revealed, without much force, even the most anticipated and darkest ones. The set design dresses the Romea with rocks, wind, and cold, in a suggestive space that wants to represent the tormented inner world of the protagonists, through which light only filters in with Mencía's jokes and her defiance of the diapers that age forces her to resume.
The play, which premiered on March 25, can be seen at the Teatre Romea until May 14. Then it will begin its tour of more than a year through Spain, stopping in Madrid between late 2023 and early 2024.