In recent weeks, Alberto Conejero has made headlines. Created together with Xavier Bobés and premiered at the TNC, his show ‘El mar: visió d’uns niens que no l’han vist mai’ was canceled in Briviesca (Burgos) by a new council of PP and Vox. If the emotional story of a republican teacher can end up censored, what a tragic fate can befall the new ‘In the middle of so much fire’ (until July 30 at Beckett), a monologue or poetic outburst that delves into the ambiguity of one of the myths of the West, the ‘Iliad’. Were the great hero Achilles and his inseparable Patroclus lovers?
No more insinuations, a revulsion against prudish Hollywood versions such as Wolfgang Petersen’s ‘Troy’ that presented them as cousins. Conejero puts all his vast knowledge of the classical world at the service of a lucid soliloquy, Patroclus speaks to us with a universal voice that goes through all of history, mythical and present, between the roar of eternal war and the daily life of walking the dog. Mixing high-sounding epithets and Alexandrian verses, a secondary now emerges who takes the floor, a carnal and suffering human, Patroclus as a rare disowned in opposition to the divine hero Achilles and his legend.
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The complex textual score, dense and stimulating especially in its first part, could not find a better teacher on the baton. The direction of Xavier Albertí reels off words like notes in a symphony at times minimalist, brossiana when it is recreated in possessives to accentuate the carnality of the text. The proposal goes to the literary essence and does without scenic flourishes, except for the sacralizing lighting that increases solemnity. Such sobriety is reminiscent of another recent Albertinian monologue, ‘El cos més bonic…’, although now it does have a handful of gestures that trap the character between destiny and desire.
But every good monologue would not be without its interpreter. Rubén de Eguía touches the acting Olympus that he already touched with ‘Els homes i els dies’. Melee suits him well, he grows in the minimum distance that separates him from an audience that vibrates like a violin string with the precision and nuances of his work. Less becomes more again, and beyond the minstrel who explains the usual war to us, the alternative story emerges in the text. In the present, the epic wants to flee from glory, it denies homelands and flags, the arrogance of the lover who wants to grow old in peace with his lover. If all the wars are Trojan, uncensored, all lovers could be like Patroclus and Achilles.
2023-07-19 19:03:10
#Criticism #middle #fire #Sala #Beckett #Trojan #stories
