Javier G. Paradelo
Torrelavega (Cantabria), Mar 3 (EFE).- The Torrelavega Winter Festival draws the curtain this weekend on its latest edition, rewarding the loyalty of Yllana, the company of comedians who performed their first gig at this event more than 30 years ago. years and has performed in the city on more than 20 occasions, all of them with great reception from the public.
This Saturday Yllana Teatro will return to the charge in Torrelavega with “The Royal Gag Orchestra”, a comic-musical show based on an original concert-show of classical music, in which it seeks the participation of the public and their complicity, until getting spectators leave their seats with a broad smile.
And after that, the company will receive the Duende Zahorí award, granted by a grateful audience that has enjoyed its productions for three decades, and with which it wants to recognize the personal and professional trajectory of the artists and their special connection with the Winter Festival and the city of Torrelavega.
In a telephone interview with EFE, the actor Juan Francisco Ramos, a founding member of Yllana and an actor who plays the conductor of the orchestra, assures that the company’s relationship with the city “is very special.” “Torrelavega is our point of reference, and we feel at home here,” he admits.
He remembers from that first gig the “warm reception” that Yllana received in the auditorium of the Marqués de Santillana Institute, then the only theater in the city, and the “enormous success” of the performance, as well as in the twenty following participations in the festival, always in the key of comedy.
On this occasion, the work tells how the famous conductor Josef Von Ramik, known for his bipolar character, returns to Torrelavega to direct the prestigious Royal Orchestra, and his non-conformist spirit, with a repertoire of the great classics of classical music. .
To complicate the evening a little more, the highly renowned violinist Gaspar Krause is invited, noted for his enormous and insufferable ego, so that the stage soon becomes a battlefield, with “insane and unpredictable” consequences.
Ramos explains that “The Royal Gag Orchestra” follows the line of Yllana’s other successful experiences such as “Pagagnini”, “Maestrissimo” and “The Opera Locos” (Max Award for Best Musical in 2019), an “orchestra for enjoyment” that manages to gather 25 people on stage and in which “comedy becomes something magical.”
Yllana’s career has meant that, weeks before the performance, all the tickets have been sold, something that Ramos attributes to “absolute loyalty” on the part of the public in the city towards the company, which feels “at home” when return to Torrelavega.
Regarding the Duende Zahorí, the founding member of Yllana assures that it is an award that they will carry “in their hearts” as a thank you to the response that the company has always had to all of their productions, an award for which they give “infinite thanks to the public of Torrelavega”.
He highlights the importance of the prize awarded by a festival “one of the important ones at the national level” and by an audience “that likes to enjoy the theater” to a company that does comedy, since “when someone is rewarded for comedy it is something absolutely wonderful ”.
“Torrelavega has seen us born as a company and I think that allows us to say that a show will work if it passes through Torrelavega”, explains Ramos, for whom the city’s public “knows theater and values companies for their quality; that is why Yllana will leave her skin for her friends from Torrelavega to enjoy”.
The founder of the company assures that 31 years of artistic career “are many for everyone”, especially with the difficulties that the world of theater has, but he emphasizes that Yllana continues to maintain its essence. “We are no longer kids but we still enjoy doing theater”, he affirms.