The war of the sexes is the central theme of the play La tendresa, written and directed by playwright Alfredo Sanzol, and translated into Catalan by Joan Lluís Bozzo. The plot is simple and, from the beginning, the viewer knows how it will end and how the action will unfold. A queen, who uses magic to achieve her purposes, hides with her two daughters on a desert island so as not to see any man. But luck is not on her side, because on the island a father lives hidden with his two sons with the same objective, not to see any woman.
The premise is set and it is important to note that we are in a play set in the 16th century; there is no need to look for deep ideas about the relationship between men and women. Imagining how the plot will end from the beginning of the play does not mean that the hour and fifty minutes of action pass slowly or boringly. And here it is necessary to highlight two strong points of the action. The first: the entanglements caused by the mother, on the one hand, and the father, on the other. Both elicit laughter. The second: the great linguistic work that Joan Lluís Bozzo has done on the play conceived and written in Spanish. In fact, I would tell you that if you have read The Adventures of Tintin in Catalan, translated by journalist Joaquim Ventalló, you will feel like you are reliving the comic strips when you hear the insults that the queen and the woodcutter hurl at each other.
What a versatile language the characters manage to have to call each other "pig" so finely. I wish I could have written down half of the expressions! A thought that accompanied me for a good while as the actors Laura Aubert, Anna Castells, Marta Pérez, Albert Prat, Jordi Rico and Ferran Vilajosana continued with the text.
Finally, the ending subtly concludes with a moral, that is, it is a comedy inspired by the universe of William Shakespeare and demonstrates that the title of the work is what sustains it. It is what human beings need to live. And I add: and a biting language like that of the artists.