La plaça del Diamant by Mercè Rodoreda returns to the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (TNC) with a choral and groundbreaking proposal, giving voice to its protagonist from many angles to portray the woman who remained behind Colometa, reclaiming a Natàlia that few thought about. There are 10 actresses who interpret her, each in her own way, with different ages and profiles. Over almost two hours, they fit together precisely like the multiple faces, or the infinity of possibilities, of the same character. All of this, solving the arduous task of sharing the lines of a first-person monologue without dialoguing with each other, only picking up the baton exactly where their predecessor left it. The narrative force of the story told by Rodoreda resonates in every word, allowing the polyphony to flow smoothly to weave a captivating plot.
It all begins in a white room, with many odds and ends in the background, waiting to be occupied. Objects gradually conquer the space as the protagonist, all the Natàlias, navigates as best she can the existence she has been given to live from an apartment in the Gràcia neighborhood. She is marked by a bloody and miserable historical unfolding, from the winds of change and justice of the Second Republic to the death and hunger of the Civil War, until reaching a dictatorship in which she scratches reality to survive with dignity.
Without forgetting the somewhat suffocating shadow of an omnipresent presence that does not materialize in the Sala Gran of the TNC, but that pursues Natàlia in any corner of the stage. We only know Quimet through what they tell, opening the door to a more current interpretation of a figure who is authoritarian and even malevolent. He ends up staining everything, as do the pigeons with which he has become obsessed, leaving a trail of dirt when they disappear.
In the background, Clara Aguilar's music completes the latest adaptation of La plaça del Diamant. It becomes another voice in Natàlia's story, intertwining precisely with the rest of the actresses, so much so that the spectator forgets it's there all the time. The sound proposal rises as a character that amplifies the echoes of the protagonist's insecurities and fears, tearing the air with the screams she utters, drowning her amidst the fluttering and cooing of the pigeons that have invaded her existence. And hitting the theater walls when destiny twists.
Carlota Subirós signs this daring adaptation of Rodoreda's quintessential classic. Although at times it is excessive, it manages to draw a new way of approaching a story to which many already put a face, be it Sílvia Munt in its film version (1982) or Sílvia Bel the last time it passed through the TNC (2007). Nor should we forget Joan Ollé's version (2004) in which three actresses played Colometa, with Montserrat Carulla, Mercè Pons, and Rosa Renom, each representing an age. Nor Lolita Flores's (2014), also directed by Joan Ollé. However, Subirós has decided to be accompanied on this occasion by Lurdes Barba, Màrcia Cisteró, Montse Esteve, Paula Jornet, Vicenta Ndongo, Neus Pàmies, Anna Pérez Moya, Alba Pujol, Vanessa Segura, and Yolanda Sey, managing to make La plaça del Diamant even more universal because Natàlia's story has been and is that of many other women.
La plaça del Diamant can be seen until November 5 at the TNC and will then go on tour, first locally and then internationally, as was done last year with Terra baixa (Reconstrucció d'un crim). With Rodoreda, the TNC has inaugurated a season marked by historical memory. It is present in the novel by the Catalan writer, exiled after the Civil War for decades in France and Switzerland, but it will also be in the theater's next production, La madre de Frankenstein, a theatrical adaptation of Almudena Grandes's novel of the same name directed by Carme Portaceli and interpreted by Blanca Portillo. After its premiere at the Teatro María Guerrero in Madrid, it will be seen from the end of November in the Catalan capital.