I believe that when theatre disappoints it does do with the same intensity as when it pleases: very much. This is not quite the same in the case of cinema, I’m not sure why; somehow, bad films are soon forgotten, whereas bad plays, always harder to follow than films, remain stuck in our memories. I’m afraid this is what will happen to me in the case of Argentinean director Claudio Tolcachir’s version of Arthur Miller’s All my sons (1947), translated as Todos eran mis hijos and staged here in Barcelona’s Teatre Poliorama within this year’s Grec Festival.
I had been warned that the production was a complete disaster, which is why I took last night’s performance with a pinch of salt and even enjoyed now and then the ham acting of minor celebrities Manuela Velasco (of REC zombie fame) and Fran Perea (from TV series Los Serranos). The seniors, Gloria Muñoz and Carlos Hipólito, were not much better. And the others, oh my… Velasco ended calling her ‘brother’ Georgie, Jordi, which provided us, Catalans, with a truly hilarious moment, while Muñoz destroyed one of the fake plants on stage by stepping on it accidentally. I could hardly hear Hipólito well (from row four…); young Perea insisted on sweating profusely and running all over the stage instead of acting. I could go on…
I’m not sure whether this appallingly bad acting was all the directors’ fault or whether Miller’s text (condensed at some points, I’m afraid…) is so outdated as to be impossible to recycle. I found it predictable, contrived (yes, there was a letter concealed for years…), very middlebrow, if you know what I mean. Now, here’s what I really wanted to say: my friends and myself, quite bemused by what we had seen, found ourselves surrounded by a sea of enthusiastic members of the audience, clapping wildly and shouting bravo. That was funny. My friends attributed the unexpected reaction (we assumed everyone was as uncomfortable, bored, astounded as we were by what went on on stage) to the celebrity cult inspired by Hipólito (the voice of the grown up Carlos in Cuéntame), Perea and Velasco and they might have a point. The audience yesterday was not the usual one at our habitual haunts, Lliure or TNC, but the ‘others’ of commercial theatre. (I, besides, found the play very alien in terms of its following stage conventions that can only be seen in Madrid’s theatres.)
Anyway, the point is that I was one of the dozens spectators clapping like mad and shouting bravo at the top of my lungs after last Sunday’s performance of Octopus, the beautiful contemporary dance show by Philpe Decouflé’s company. A friend told me he’d enjoyed it but found it just pretty, immediately forgivable. Um. To him I am, therefore, what the ‘others’ were yesterday to me at Poliorama, which is making me think hard about theatre and taste. Each one of us is a stage snob, just like that, and there’s little we can do except avoid shows not intended for us. Actually, when I saw the poster for the play I saw yesterday, circulating all over Barcelona on the side panels of buses, it took me a while to connect it with the play I had tickets for. “This is a play,” I told myself then, contemplating the cast’s photo, “I’m not going to see.”
Too late, big mistake. I was lured by Miller’s name, I should have checked the other names. Or see, perhaps, the 1948 film version with Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster…