Tirant lo Blanc was one of those books that no one could skip in class. Mandatory reading for many generations, many remember its most risqué scenes and all the jokes they made while studying it. This is what happened to the members of the theater company who will perform the new version, written by Màrius Serra and directed by Joan Arqué, on the Romea stage. All of them had Joanot Martorell's chivalric novel on their exams, and some even remember it like actress Clara Mingueza, in the role of Carmesina, who admits she got excited reading it.
Serra, responsible for reducing a 1,000-page story to just 38 pages for its staging, admits that the adaptations made for high schools were designed to unscrupulously target adolescent hormones, but that there is much more to Tirant lo Blanc than just the love scenes, as well as the battles. The writer wanted to reflect this in his adaptation of the classic, focusing on the sea where the protagonist was shipwrecked, where today many migrants continue to drown. "More than five centuries later, we suffer the same conflicts," Serra emphasizes. "It begins with the betrayal of the Vídua Reposada to make Tirant believe that Carmesina is cheating on him. This generates a lot of anger in him, Tirant's embarkation, and the subsequent shipwreck that leads to the North African episodes. A shipwreck in the Mediterranean, seen through 21st-century eyes, acquires very different layers and refers us to what we experience today: Christendom against the external threat and, above all, the fear of the other," he adds.
It is here that the formerly adolescent readers who will now represent the nine characters into which the play has been condensed at the Raval theater realize that they remember none of that. "The whole part about the shipwreck and his journey in African lands, I didn't even know it existed; it's an episode they didn't make you read in school," explains actress Laura Aubert, in the role of Plaerdemavida, "we will reveal a little-known part and do justice by showing that Tirant is not so white."
"Tirant would have cut off my head," says actor Moha Amazian, in the role of the Emir dels Emirs, an adaptation by Serra, since in the original version it was Cabdill dels Cabdills, a title with too many connotations in the country. "Those moments when Tirant could present himself as a reprehensible person were not explained. For me, Tirant was a hero while the Emir, as Martorell depicts him, seemed to me a unscrupulous person. We have sought a point of humanity. All of this blurs Tirant's heroism and it is important to do this exercise. Màrius and Joan have decided to question a figure that, for many, perhaps it will hurt to see in a delicate or less benevolent situation," adds Amazian. But not only will a key hero in the history of Catalan literature be seen under another light, but there will also be more understanding with other characters in the plot usually criticized, such as the Vídua Reposada, understanding a little more her motives and insecurities, moving away from the hackneyed myth of the evil, jealous and resentful woman.
It must be said that in Tirant lo Blanc a little word like uchronia comes into play, something that was rarely heard in class and did not appear on exams. It refers to the reconstruction of a story based on hypothetical data. "I'm sure my teachers didn't even know what a uchronia was," defends Mingueza. This was Martorell's true intention, who began writing the novel seven years after the fall of Constantinople "to correct with the pen the defeat that the sword of the Turks had inflicted on the Christians," Serra emphasizes.
The updated version of the classic that even Don Quixote liked premiered this Tuesday and can be seen until August 4 at the Romea, with a duration of less than two hours. It had not been performed on its stage for 16 years, as its artistic director, Josep Maria Pou, recalls. At that time, Calixto Bieito was in charge of the adaptation and left no one indifferent. It remains to be seen if the same happens with the proposal by Serra and Arqué, who recently directed Irene Solà's Canto jo i la muntanya balla, where she was accompanied by the music of Judit Nedderman and now she counts on her again, making her be on stage as another actress. A co-production of the Romea and the Grec Festival, the play will return later to the Barcelona theater and will also be seen at the Sagunt a Escena festival and in Madrid, at the Teatro de la Comedia.
A very Barcelona Grec
The premiere of Tirant lo Blanc has been brought forward by one day to the kick-off of the 48th edition of the Grec Festival, which once again looks to its hometown after having spent some years traveling across different continents. From Wednesday until early August, a total of 81 shows, with 35 plays and 15 concerts, will give new meaning to the Barcelona brand. In the last year with Cesc Casadesús as director, artists such as Sílvia Pérez Cruz, Rita Payés, Alizzz, and Queralt Lahoz, and companies such as La Veronal, La Brutal, and Dagoll Dagom will participate. Angélica Liddell, a major international figure of the current scene born in Figueres, who still has much to be recognized locally, will also be seen.