T de Teatre premieres new comedy about family and mental health

It is a proposal with cinematic overtones where, thanks to an impressive set design, we can see everything that happens in different spaces at simultaneous moments. Brief, comical, and agile scenes are shown before our eyes thanks to the mobility of the stage.

The play tells us the story of three sisters, one of whom has suffered a psychological crisis and has been admitted for a month to a psychiatric hospital. But today is the day of discharge, so they decide to have a welcome dinner to celebrate that she is back home. Faced with this delicate and difficult situation to manage (because we do not have the tools to deal with problems derived from mental health), the sisters try to make it seem that nothing has happened and that everyone is well and happy. But it is not like that and Llum (Carme Pla) will try to explain what she has experienced, without being able to say a single word.

A very accurate family portrait

This is the best of this proposal: the stigma of mental health problems. It is shown from a natural and simple perspective, but the background exists and we feel very identified: when faced with a problem we don't understand, we pretend that everything is fine. Even if nothing is fine. But it's better to uncork a bottle of wine, toast, laugh, and talk about anything but what is really important.

We attend, then, a family reunion that has very little familiarity. It seems more like an obligatory meeting, a get-together to catch up, rather than a meeting to talk about what has been experienced and to connect with the people you love. And this, sadly, is the reality of many families: better to look the other way, instead of facing problems head-on.

Excellent performances by T de Teatre and company

Mamen Duch, Marta Pérez, Carme Pla, and Àgata Roca are T de Teatre, a company with a name and surname. The four actresses nail their roles:

• Mamen Duch, playing the role of a high-class woman, completely alone in a giant and empty apartment.
• Marta Pérez doing a great job as Llum's (Carme Pla) travel and "madness" companion.
• Àgata Roca playing a woman who escapes reality between glasses of wine.
• And, finally, Carme Pla who plays the sister who has suffered a very deep and devastating depression.

Along with them, we see Albert Ribalta and Jordi Rico, regular companions of the company and who also draw very well-defined and totally opposite characters.

A script that doesn't quite explode (or does so in a confusing and rushed way)

Avui no ploraré is a comedy with a very well-defined premise. We get to know each character, we get an idea of who they are and what they're like, we enter their lives and... it's dinner time. All the dramatic tension revolves around this dinner where, always, someone ends up crying (hence the title of the play). We are expectantly waiting for what will happen, how all the accumulated tension will explode and... the bomb doesn't appear. Well, a forced, too fast and exaggerated scene does appear that doesn't quite fit.

The ending is very rushed, too much so. From this climax moment, which is too forced, the play declines. A very histrionic scene, full of shouts, surreal situations and confrontations that have been prepared more to make people laugh than for narrative logic. And, after that, a final scene where the outcome of each character is narrated. The ending does not match the essence of the play. We have been very well placed in the scene, but then everything is rushed and resolved in an unbelievable way and too prepared to "make people laugh". A shame, because the expectation was very high.

Avui no ploraré by T de Teatre is a comedy worth seeing to watch this company in action. It is always a pleasure to see them perform live and confirm, once again, the great chemistry they have working together. But the script doesn't quite work. You leave the theater with the feeling of having witnessed a dinner where, after all, nothing happens. The characters evolve off stage, in that final speech where it is explained how they end up, but on stage there is not much more than shouting and reproaches.