The Gran Teatro de Córdoba hosts this Saturday at 6:00 p.m. the stage version of a masterpiece by Mario Vargas Llosa, The party of the goat. Other notable factors are added to the interest of the text, among them that it is Juan Echanove the protagonist of the montage in the role of the Dominican dictator Leónidas Trujillo – nicknamed El Chivo-, and that the direction falls on Carlos Saura.
If to all this we add that the author of the famous novel, after considering the task impossible, has described the adaptation to the tables of his book as “magnificent”, the result could not be otherwise: the production has been since its premiere one of the greatest hits of the current theatrical billboard.
The masterful work of Nobel Prize in Literature it has hardly been taken to the theater for its richness and complexity. In The party of the goat The last days of General Trujillo are narrated in the Dominican Republic, subjected to the terror of the tyrant for decades.
The author uses the character of Urania Cabral, a successful lawyer who mysteriously left the country. Three decades later, he returns to visit his dying father, a high-ranking official in the Regime who fell from grace. During that trip, the secret that the woman has jealously guarded since her escape will be revealed.
Natalio Grueso, author of the adaptation, has used a pleasant and direct style that remains faithful to the “rich” language of Vargas Llosa’s work. “The adapter considers that Trujillo is a fascinating character and a transcript of Shakespearean Ricardo III for his ability to perpetuate himself at the head of the country,” they indicate from the Municipal Institute of Performing Arts of Córdoba (IMAE).
Regarding the history of The party of the goat, Grueso has pointed out that the dictator ruled for almost 30 years “with cruelty and megalomania never seen before, but also with an intelligence that allowed him to get rid of all his enemies and stay in power and thus managed to impose a terror regime in all the country”.
Consequently, Grueso clarifies that the fundamental element of his version for the theater is “the fear, a fear that leads all the characters to degrade as human beings “. Despite this, the work” is a life lesson that reminds us that worth and dignity they are the only antidotes to evil and barbarism. “
“As they already did with another masterpiece of the Latin American boom, The colonel has no one to write to him, by Gabriel García Márquez, a montage that could be seen at the Gran Teatro last October, Natalio Grueso once again forms a tandem in this production with Carlos Saura “, the IMAE has distinguished.
“The also film director approaches the work shocked by the real events that occurred during one of the bloodiest tyrannies of Latin America“, Saura has affirmed, who has been surprised by how” this cruel and deified dictator “could govern for so many years with the” collusion “of a large part of the civilized world.
“Trujillo lived and reigned with unusual cruelty by the grace of God,” said Saura, who also recalled the famous motto of the character: “God in heaven, Trujillo on earth”.
In the words of the director, this is a work that demands “excellence in interpretation”, since, in addition, he has indicated that all the actors are “magnificent”, but he has highlighted Juan Echanove, like Trujillo, and Lucía Quintana, like Urania. The cast is completed by Manuel Morón, Eduardo Velasco, Gabriel Garbisu, Eugenio Villota and David Pinilla.
“Juan Echanove faces the enormous challenge of giving all the nuances to a complex, intelligent, cruel, funny, megalomaniac, tormented, hateful, attractive character … And he does, without falling into the stereotype and without limiting the character “, stressed the director of the play.
By last, Echavone he has indicated that he has tried to be “extremely careful” with the volume and the tempo, with the pause, and not to load the inks; letting literature lead the viewer to the reflection of being “in front of a monster.”
“The party of the goat is a clear warning against the saviors of the motherland. The homeland is saved by citizens who get up in the morning and not by dictators, “concluded Echanove.
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