Inaugurating its fiftieth edition with The Threepenny Opera, the Grec gave the impression of wanting to assert itself through a theater that went beyond the classic format of tradition, with social criticism as its backbone. Unfortunately, this kick-off proved to be quite a failure, as director Marta Pazos managed to transform Brecht and Weill's masterpiece into an unbearable bore, absolutely out of style, with the actor-singers lost in tessituras that were not their own and a misse-en-scène without any mischief. The fact in question was not attributable to its protagonists -among whom the splendid Miriam Moukhles stood out- but to Pazos' defenselessness before a work too difficult to save with four design tricks (the same thing happened with her Liceu Nozze, which leads me to recommend to our managers that, if they want to make the Galician artist a star of the nostrada scene, they commission her works for beginners; no matter how much she makes the complacent audiences of the city laugh, L'Òpera de tres rals has much more complexity than a show performed by La Maña). I hope things improve in its landing at the Teatre Lliure, which will require a much more rogue direction from our splendid musician-maestro Dani Espasa.
It's somewhat ironic that, with a forewoman like Leticia Martin, a producer more than learned in musicology, the sound shows of this Grec have been so uninteresting. Overcoming the disappointment of the inauguration was difficult, but director Michael De Cock (familiarly known by theater people as "en Miquel Del Penis," because he already has more works premiered at the TNC than any author of tribal heritage) achieved it with Bovary, a sound adaptation of Flaubert's magnum opus. I am tremendously in favor of admiring works of art about female emancipation, but transforming the Flaubertian protagonist into a compulsive man-killer and her daughter into a member of the Pussy Riot was laughable. Harold Noben's music also caused me quite a bit of hilarity; imbued by the empowering atmosphere of the (fortunately) soon-to-be former director of the TNC, he signed a score where the protagonist seems to compulsively chain together the death of Isolde. The climax, I wholeheartedly recommend it, the quote from Regnava nel silenzio de la Lucia; enough to make you burst out laughing. Ladies of the Grec: can we really not dedicate the efforts of this production to commissioning a decent opera from our local librettists-composers? Believe me; they know how to do better things than such a botched job.
My homemade claim is not the result of a provincial spirit. In fact, at the Grec I attended most international shows, because this is a festival that should be an open door to the world of a type of theater more difficult to see on the stages of our own thing. I expected to find it in Ophelia's got talent, a celebrated Gesamtkunstwerk by the highly coveted and omnipresent festival star of the European scene; Florentina Holzinger. The Austrian performer, it is evident, is in one of those sweet moments for any creator where she can do whatever she pleases; this is how the spectator is tempted to orgasm when, with the excuse of exalting the sacrifice of the Hamletian Ophelia (a victim of femicide, the corny would say), the creator devises a laughable talent show in which we can find beautiful circus acts, divas who swallow swords (thanks to technology, we can admire their intestinal nooks and crannies), transvestites who pretend to drown imprisoned in water, crippled individuals who dance happily, mermaids who parade their peace inside a pool, and even women literally fucking a helicopter. But, apart from showing us a lot of parrús (we're old enough, my queen), it had been a long time since I had seen so many resources at the service of a poetics of smoke without any contribution.
The thing is funny, because where I've had the best time at this Grec is in the shows where there was less megalomaniac substance and more sense of the theatrical experience, however alternative its format. Mr. Romeo Castellucci, for example, is an old cat of the scenic game and in Creure en les màscares he only needs a series of objects (in an almost random arrangement with Joan Brossa), about twenty spectators among whom infiltrators were hidden and, obviously, to put a mask on us to work the miracle of giving us little more than half an hour of disturbing poetry. The thing of minimal gesture but maximum performance can also be applied to an interpreter-dramatist as roguish as Alberto Cortés; El corazón de Ester may not be his best piece, but the Malaga creator has a lot of grace when it comes to perpetrating scenic proposals with the laudable (and frightfully narcissistic) objective of making himself loved. In this work, the trick works halfway, since the palette of gestures and formal chastity (Spaniards have their grace because, even when they feign modernity, the folkloric woman they have stuck in their brain comes out) is complemented by a text where the union between audience-interpreter is woven through hyper-kitschy sentences, painfully close to self-help.
"After so much ideological imposition in theater, I was thrilled that someone had the kindness to make us think through irony"
Far from sentimental affectation, at home we are firm defenders of irony. In my immodest view, the best textual show of this Grec was SPAFRICA, a scenic marvel product of Studio Julian Hetzel and the great Ntando Cele about the prejudices of colonialism towards blackness. I would like to see the South African creator again in theaters like La Brossa, an environment where her science shines with special force. I liked everything about this show, from the wonderful pre-post-show interview (surprise included) with a Ferran Dordal who is very funny as himself, to the commercial metaphor of European tears of supposed sorrow for the Third World, to the exaggerated performativity of what we describe as foreign or directly savage. But above all, I found it very intelligent that Cele brought us closer to ideologies such as feminism or decolonization by making fun of herself. After so much ideological imposition in the theater, I was thrilled that someone had the kindness to make us think through irony (it's a shame that Wasted land, her large-format show at the Puigserver, erred in the poetic parallelism with Eliott and was a significant bore). I am pleased, in short, to see progressives who lecture me knowing that they have an apartment in Switzerland.
In the "pot petit" club there is also the very dignified Muljil by Elephant's laugh. The artistic collective from Korea showed us that, in order to make great theater, it is enough to have an idea, however simple it may be (in this case, the equivalence between the free diving in the sea by the women of Jeju Island to search for seafood and the philosophical-sentimental-aqueous dullness of Asian postmodernity; its creators must have read Sloterdijk) when it comes to devising a magnificent show. I am absolutely against shows that involve the audience to please them, since the distance between creator and subject has always bothered me; but it must be said that this piece manages to make the appearance of spontaneous participants in the universe of water bathtubs become a purifying caracara more than real. Proposals like this, I dare to insist, form experiences that are not at all grandiloquent - at the antipodes of the cuquiporno expressionism of the much-requested Holzinger - but help to bring theater to its natural ground; that of thought. When I meet Leticia Martin in the bar where we have breakfast (they make the best morning sandwiches in Ciutat Vella, but I'm not going to name it... we popularize so many places and then we can't even sit down) I will tell her.
With so much international revelry, I know, I've forgotten to talk about local theater; apart from what was said earlier, much of the Grec's money will be seen in our city's venues in a short time, so we'll rush there when the time comes. Suffice it to say, for now, that the tribal stars of the boomer generation -Calixto Bieito and Àlex Rigola- continue in enviable form. The former's tricks may have aged due to mere repetition, although Bieito still retains the prodigious ability to lead his actors (Argentinianness suits him very well, because histrionics are tolerated a little more in them than in performers from Old Europe) to the precise ground he desires. This version of Richard III has quite a bit of charm, although he should change an ending that is -literally- a schoolyard scene which, compared to the rest of the show, is a bit embarrassing. Àlex's La Factory has an even higher level, not only because he has brought back one of the best actors in the country (we revere you, Lluís Villanueva!), but because our director has finally managed to hit the right spot between the mystical -without overdoing the sugar- and the paths of sexual drive. It's a real shame that, after so much superfluous spending, this Shakespeare-Warhol dance will no longer have a place in the Heartbreak or anywhere else next season.
Perhaps I am being presumptuous, but analyzing everything I have seen of the Grec, I would say that the beating of dance over theater (in terms of intellectual risk, but also in terms of pure technique) is more than evident. Spectators, I suppose due to a generational issue, loved the performance by the very veteran Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Solal Mariotte of Jacques Brel's work. Evidently, seeing a dancer approaching seventy years old performing a ninety-minute show produces contagious energy, although to me this BREL seemed like a wonderful playlist with rather easy recurring images. A separate matter is the Theatre of dreams by the Hofesch Schechter Company; oh, friends, here we do have a truly first-world show, with dancers educated in the strictest classicism (that is, an essential condition for tackling contemporary dance as it should be) and a journey between Lynchian and disco-like into the world of dreams that is a real blast of synchronization and energy! It was very worthwhile to think of such a proposal as an inverted mirror of the Chinese group TAO DANCE THEATRE, which also emulated the world's disco, reminding us that debauchery does not lead to ecstasy, but to a zoo of bodies that percuss the infinite repetition.
Be that as it may, I would say that the course of this Grec has shown us how the traditional beams of European left-wing thought -basically, the theme of female empowerment, the fight against cultural ethnocentrism and the critique of rampant capitalism- have been milked so many times that they now only lead to useless sermons. On the other hand, the nagging can serve to stir up the former Barcelona middle class a little... but it no longer gives us any interesting vision of the future, beyond what may interest the manaires-culturals elites of the Barcelona PSC. This agony has its grace, because art must also indicate the twilight prior to social transitions; and perhaps with this it is enough to consider a festival good. I would ask our managers, and Leticia Martin is a more than intelligent woman, to go a little further; to the occupation data (which I have not looked at, because it causes me quite a lot of laziness) I would also begin to calibrate the quality of a festival through what matters most; its ability to insinuate new forms and, please, to change propaganda for some new and stimulating idea. Excuse the hurried and somewhat boring summary, but theater is always much more vital than it seems...
See you next year, of course.