The Lliure prepares a season full of questions to answer with Chekhov, Lorca and La Calòrica

After a first few months at the helm of Teatre Lliure, Julio Manrique has prepared a first season that ranges from classics like Chekhov, Molière, Shakespeare, and Lorca to a new production by La Calórica. "It is a contemporary program, open and committed to the debates and uncertainties of our world," Manrique defended, "I believe that a theater is not the best place in the world for certainties, but it is an unbeatable space for questions to move us and make us think."

After achieving an 81% occupancy this season, with almost 88,000 spectators and 3,000 subscriptions, the 2024/2025 season will consist of a total of 24 shows, with 15 of them produced by the Barcelona venue. The Seagull by Chekhov will be in charge of raising the curtain in Montjuïc, directed by Manrique himself and starring Cristina Genebat, Daniel Selvas, and David Verdaguer.

Then will come another great name like Molière with The Misanthrope, a social media and posturing version, with Pol López and Mireia Aixalà, previously premiered at the Grec Festival. Shakespeare will be seen in a very free Hamlet interpreted by actors with Down Syndrome at the Lliure de Gràcia and a Casting Lear in the recovered Espai Lliure, highly applauded at the Teatro de La Abadía in Madrid.

After the Yerma starring Maria Hervás, Federico García Lorca will return to the stage of the Sala Fabià Puigserver with The Public, directed by Marta Pazos, who recently dazzled with her stage direction for the opera Alexina B. at the Liceu. As if any title by the Granada-born author were not enough, the play will be performed by the Comedia Nacional de Montevideo, founded by his actress and great friend Margarida Xirgu. "It seems like a beautiful rhyme to me," Manrique commented.

Everything La Calórica does becomes a success, as recently seen at Espai Texas with the revival of Fairfly, and La brama del cérvol (a unique experience in an incomparable setting), their new production, will surely be too, closing the season at the Lliure de Montjuïc. If some urbanites go to a cute hotel in the mountains to disconnect and pass through the hands of this theater company, it is already known that there will be guaranteed laughs, without neglecting the frivolity of the society that surrounds them.

Manrique's first season, in which he will incorporate the current director of the Grec Festival, Cesc Casadesús, as assistant director, will also bring L'herència, a play about young gay men in Trump's United States, directed by Josep Maria Mestres and starring Carlos Cuevas. "A colossal work, also due to its duration," Manrique advanced. Picking up the baton from long plays marked by El día del Watusi, this one will run for six hours, with two parts that will be spread over two weekdays and concentrated on Saturdays and Sundays. "I am convinced that it will become an event," remarked the director of the Lliure. A commitment to demanding formats that is also seen in the intention to reprogram Francisco Casavella's adaptation again in two seasons.

In addition to all this, the new management of the Lliure has as its star measure the recovery of the Espai Lliure as a permanent exhibition hall. The season will begin there with La nit del peix kiwi, about an actor in decline who works in the municipal tow truck, premiered at Sala Flyhard. Also noteworthy is the proposal with which Manrique won the directorship, the Ànima Lliure project, with which he wants to make visible people with functional diversity on stage, an objective that his predecessor, Juan Carlos Martel Ba­yod, already began with the excellent adaptation of Lectura fácil. From now on, there will be one production per season. The first will be Fantàstic Ramon, with dramaturgy and direction by Clàudia Cedó.

To add one more recommendation, Victoria Szpunberg's L'imperatiu categòric, one of this season's successes, will be reprogrammed, and 14.4 will arrive, a monologue by a young man who emigrates from Tangier to Spain, conceived by the duo behind the last great work dedicated to Lorca, Una noche sin luna, Juan Diego Botto and Sergio Peris-Mencheta.