The complicated relationships between parents and children, which the Greek Aristophanes already echoed more than 24 centuries ago in his comedy “Las Nubes”, arrive this week at the Mérida Classic Theater Festival by the hand, precisely, of a father and son in real life, the actors Pepe and Samuel Viyuela.
To this eternal issue another one is added as a dressing: the difficult and complicated situation of the entrepreneurs and programmers of the performing arts, embodied in the role that Paco Mirdirector of the work and responsible for the adaptation of the Greek text, has given it to Mariano Peña.
All of them, along with the rest of the cast, such as Cristina Almazán, Manuel Monteagudo, Mocho Sánchez-Diezma, Paqui Montoya and Amparo Marín, as well as the festival’s director, Jesus Cimarrohave been this Monday at the press conference to present this show, which will be at the Roman Theater from July 26 to 30.
The original text of “Las Nubes” is a criticism against the tyranny of children and against those who through verbiage seek to shape society. However, Paco Mir, without undoing the thematic ball, has chiselled it to his liking.
Time cuts, more femininity, name changes in the characters, a nod to the Meritense theater itself and some musical are some of the brushstrokes of the Catalan actor and director. “It’s a great hooliganism to a work that is already hooligan”, Mir has said in reference to his work.
Estrepsíades (Pepe Viyuela) is a scoundrel father ruined as a result of the debts of his lazy son, Hipocomiso (Samuel Viyuela). Both will learn some rhetoric, understood as a way to tell their creditors that things are not as they seem and that, really, there is no debt.
It is, therefore, also a criticism of the dubious value of the empty word, “the lie, manipulation and charlatanism, very present in advertising and politics”, has pointed out Pepe Viyuela, a true veteran of this festival with eight works on his emeritense curriculum.
Mir has introduced a second thematic scenario: the inauguration of the Roman theater in Mérida promoted by the consul Marco Vipsiano Agrippa. An approach of “theater within theatre, of a play within a play”, with which the director jokes about a profession in which “things remain the same” after many centuries.
On the occasion of said inauguration, the person in charge of it (Cristina Almazán) will allow herself to be fooled by the theatrical programmer “Ultimátum”, embodied in Paco Peña, so that the opening work is Greek, always under the watchful eye of an architect who has done what he wanted, “Calatravium”, a role that falls to Moncho Sánchez-Diezma.
Logically, and hence the title of the work, the clouds will appear, roles that Paco Mir has feminized and that represent the good and bad arguments for decisions (Paqui Montoya and Amparo Marín).
“The smile is guaranteed,” said Peña, who has praised Mérida as a “temple of art.”