The Estunmen catch fire at the Teatre Lliure

This time, Nao Albet and Marcel Borràs exchange skateboards for free falls and movie fights, jumping without a net into the world of opera to reflect on the hero and violence. The result? A grandiose staging, with a comic and superhero aesthetic, that catches our eye but leaves us wanting more.

The story of Els Estunmen: Evangelina's journey

The plot of Els Estunmen presents us with the tragedy of Evangelina and her partner, broken parents after their teenage son has caused a massacre at his high school. Faced with this horror, the mother begins a particular odyssey to understand what has led her son to this violent drift. In this journey, Evangelina clashes head-on with a masculinized society where stimuli of violence (video games, comics, rage) flood everything, leaving love in the background.

It is here that the stuntmen, the film specialists, appear. These actors who normally live in the shadows, putting their bodies for the sake of the show, now step into the front row to show us their reality of risk and testosterone. We even see how Evangelina herself transforms, masculinizing, as she delves into this world of social violence.

The best of the night: Opera 2.0

If Els Estunmen stands, it is thanks to its format. We are facing an opera 2.0 that works perfectly. The music by Fernando Velázquez (a master of soundtracks) and the live voices are, simply, spectacular. The dialogues have the freshness and humor that characterize the authors, and the orchestra creates moments of great sonic beauty. That is why the proposal is worth seeing.

The specialists, for their part, deliver moments of great visual impact, with high jumps and an incendiary final number that keeps us glued to our seats. But we come back to the same thing: there is a lot of spectacle and a lot of noise, but the dramaturgy falters.

Too many themes for so little discourse

But what about the script? Albet and Borràs try to touch too many keys at once. They want to talk about family tragedy, toxic masculinity, violence in classrooms, and the world of action specialists. Although they seek a common thread, the result is a difficult-to-digest potpourri. Ideas mix and none of them quite gel; we would have loved to delve deeper into the family drama or the root of this social violence, but everything remains on the surface of the show.

A separate mention deserves the attempt at a feminist discourse, which turns out to be quite strange and simplistic. There is a scene where the stuntmen dress up as women to be "allies" in the protagonist's struggle... How? Women do not need men to make themselves visible. It is a strange message, too little worked on and too basic.

Els Estunmen is a visual and sound puzzle that confirms that Albet and Borràs are masters of artifice. Even so, on this occasion, the form has devoured the content. Lots of gunpowder, lots of jumps, and lots of opera, but a message that gets lost between sweat and special effects.