When one attends a play that really is four, that each one of them has its own direction and dramaturgy, that eight actors and actresses give life to 47 characters, and everything goes perfectly, the theater tastes like blessed glory, even more so when the epistle bears Shakespeare’s stamp.
The three actresses and five actors who tonight have staged “Coriolanus”, “Julius Caesar”, “Anthony and Cleopatra” and “Titus Andronicus”, works written by the English playwright between 1594 and 1608, have given a carnal lesson , spiritual and professional of what this love means for one of the pillars of fine arts.
Their names: Xurxo Cortázar, Sheyla Fariña, Fran Peleteiro, Keka Losada, Marcos Orsi, Rebeca Montero, Santi Romay and Toni Salgado. Your wear is brutal.
Cadence, gesticulation, exposition, movement, rapid costume changes, interpretation… tables, in short, have impregnated the theatrical verses of the show “Shakespeare in Rome”, a proposal by the Galician Drama Center as part of the International Classical Theater Festival of Mérida.
Without pauses or sermons that guide the viewer to link the four works into one, the eight actors have given their best to give viewers a master class on why one decides to go on stage.
They are not snippets or dramatic hors d’oeuvres. It is Shakespeare in its purest form stamped by the direction Rui Madeira, María Barcala and Xúlio Lago, Sara Rey and Quico Cadaval, and Volodymir Snegurchemko -Ukrainian refugee in Portual-, Ana Carreira, Ana Abad de Larriva and Lorena Conde in the dramaturgies.
Despite this “totum revolutum”, each work has its space, its moment and its staging, and all of them serve to tell the parishioners that human miseries, struggles for power and wars are intrinsic to the human being. . Through characters such as Cayo Marcio Coriolano, Agrippa and Cominio, the use of the voice of the people to achieve particular interests is denounced, that the hypocrisy of power is still in force and that it is not good that said power falls into only one hands.
That Caesar cannot be a lion if he does not have sheep under his command, that the designs of the gods cannot be above the will of men and that those who prefer to follow a leader even if it means their slavery, as they elevate, go astray. Octavian and Brutus.
That passion, like that of Alexander and Cleopatra, is the force of life, but it can also be an obstacle or even a downfall, and that the violence of Tito Andrónico only generates more violence.
A fine rain has been added to all this for a few moments, as if the gods were crying when they saw so much atrocious act.
alberto santacruz