Sixto Paz Produccions once again moves audiences with the staging of an unassuming yet exquisite text: a piece that speaks of you, of me, and of all the anonymous souls inhabiting this world. A work where seemingly nothing happens, yet everything transpires – life passes, love passes, family passes, dreams pass.
Simon Stephens’s Morning Sun reads like a tribute to humanity. Not to great poets, musicians, or actors, but to the humanity made up of the rest of us: the baker, the waitress, the street sweeper, the vet. Ordinary people who are the very ones holding up the world. And these people deserve a story – the story that can now be seen at La Villarroel.
From Edward Hopper to the stage of La Villarroel
Pau Roca directs the Catalan-language adaptation of Morning Sun, translated by Adriana Nadal and performed by Míriam Iscla, Anna Güell, and Raquel Ferri. The production draws its title from Edward Hopper’s eponymous 1952 canvas, which depicts a woman perched on a bed, allowing the early morning sunlight to warm her skin.
Her expression is enigmatic; she is lost in thought because, even if she appears entirely anonymous to the viewer, that woman has a history – her own story. The sun illuminates that figure, casting light upon her story, and that is precisely what Stephens achieves in Morning Sun: he illuminates the journey of an ordinary woman who, bathed in that beam of light, becomes visible, recognised, and granted the dignity she deserves.
Pau Roca, the production’s director, puts it plainly: “Each of our ordinary lives contains an extraordinary amount of memory, loss, desire, love, and mystery. And it is this mystery that captivates us so deeply in Hopper’s Morning Sun.” Stephens does much the same with Charly McBride (played by Míriam Iscla), the play’s protagonist – a New Yorker who shares her story from childhood living with her parents right through to adulthood, when, now a mother herself, she resolves to leave the metropolis behind for Colorado. A life like any other, quiet and unremarkable on the surface, yet one that, examined through the lens of theatre and shared humanity, assumes the true weight and significance it has always possessed.
Performing from the skin and from truth
Míriam Iscla gets right under the skin of Charlotte – or Charly. She is the daughter, but she is also the mother. She treats us to a delicate, natural performance that shifts effortlessly between laughter and tears, joy and heartache. Iscla has an exceptional gift for taking a text and imbuing it with a raw humanity and truth seldom witnessed on stage. Nothing about her feels feigned or forced.
The same holds true for her co-stars, Anna Güell and Raquel Ferri, who together bring alive three women bound by the ties of blood and devotion. It is an ensemble piece carried by just three actresses, yet they summon a multitude of secondary figures through nothing more than a shift in posture, a drop in vocal register, or a keener glance. An entire tapestry of characters from the protagonist’s life populates the stage in a manner so organic that the narrative momentum never falters. Yet the true dramatic and emotional weight rests squarely on them: the women of the family.
Family as sanctuary
The familial bond is exquisitely observed throughout the play: a relationship forged from trust, affection, mutual reliance, recriminations, and boundless love. Family as a sanctuary, a nest to return to whenever your wings are clipped. Kinship may sometimes sting, but the shelter it provides, the solace it offers, and the trunk it upholds are what keep us standing.
Charly’s mother confesses her fascination with extraordinary individuals – artists, innovators, those who achieve the seemingly impossible. Yet Charly mounts a passionate defence of mundane lives: existences that might appear mediocre from afar, but harbour deep wells of love, perseverance, struggle, fortitude, grief, heartache, and love all over again. “Why do you only focus on the lives of artists, poets, and painters?” the daughter asks her mother, insisting that, when all is said and done, everyday people are the ones who sustain the world. And that is something we rarely seem to notice until they are gone.
Ordinary, unassuming people pass away, and only then do you realise how profoundly they shaped you. Those seemingly minor figures disappear, laying bare their influence, their quiet strength, and just how much they meant to your world, your universe, your everyday reality. If ordinary people were to vanish from society, we would soon grasp how desperately we need them: we need them all – the poets and the street sweepers, those who sing and those who clean. And we all lean on that very same foundation: mothers, daughters, family, and the love that ultimately holds everything together.
The unmistakable Sixto Paz touch
Another highlight of Morning Sun is its seamless use of metatheatre. Across the performance, the actresses frequently break character, stepping outside the dramatic fiction to address the audience directly or trade candid reflections among themselves on the story they are unfolding. This device lends freshness, authenticity, and a gentle touch of humour to the proceedings, defusing tension and grounding the drama during its heavier scenes.
It is the signature hallmark of Sixto Paz Produccions, a company that consistently brings to the stage stories brimming with natural ease, tenderness, and an understated wit that makes life feel kinder and infinitely more beautiful.
Embracing what matters
After taking in Morning Sun at La Villarroel, you rise from your seat, catch the metro, and arrive back home. And even if those same workplace worries, money anxieties, or romantic entanglements remain waiting, you open the front door, embrace your family, and feel as though you have everything you could ever need. Because triumph in this life is not about stellar careers or taking centre stage; true success is having the love of your mother, your father, your grandparents, your children, or your closest friends. The rest... the rest is merely literature.