{"id":245,"date":"2011-07-10T13:38:06","date_gmt":"2011-07-10T11:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=245"},"modified":"2011-07-10T13:38:06","modified_gmt":"2011-07-10T11:38:06","slug":"when-its-bad-its-worse-arthur-miller-all-my-sons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2011\/07\/10\/when-its-bad-its-worse-arthur-miller-all-my-sons\/","title":{"rendered":"WHEN IT\u2019S BAD, IT\u2019S WORSE: ARTHUR MILLER ALL MY SONS<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tI 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\u2019m not sure why; somehow, bad films are soon forgotten, whereas bad plays, always harder to follow than films, remain stuck in our memories. I\u2019m afraid this is what will happen to me in the case of Argentinean director Claudio Tolcachir\u2019s version of Arthur Miller\u2019s All my sons<\/em> (1947), translated as Todos eran mis hijos<\/em> and staged here in Barcelona\u2019s Teatre Poliorama within this year\u2019s Grec Festival.<\/p>\n

\tI had been warned that the production was a complete disaster, which is why I took last night\u2019s performance with a pinch of salt and even enjoyed now and then the ham acting of minor celebrities Manuela Velasco (of REC<\/em> zombie fame) and Fran Perea (from TV series Los Serranos<\/em>). The seniors, Gloria Mu\u00f1oz and Carlos Hip\u00f3lito, were not much better. And the others, oh my… Velasco ended calling her \u2018brother\u2019 Georgie, Jordi, which provided us, Catalans, with a truly hilarious moment, while Mu\u00f1oz destroyed one of the fake plants on stage by stepping on it accidentally. I could hardly hear Hip\u00f3lito well (from row four…); young Perea insisted on sweating profusely and running all over the stage instead of acting. I could go on…<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure whether this appallingly bad acting was all the directors\u2019 fault or whether Miller\u2019s text (condensed at some points, I\u2019m afraid…) is so outdated as to be impossible to recycle.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\u2019s 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 Hip\u00f3lito (the voice of the grown up Carlos in Cu\u00e9ntame<\/em>), 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 \u2018others\u2019 of commercial theatre. (I, besides, found the play very alien in terms of its following stage conventions that can only be seen in Madrid\u2019s theatres.)<\/p>\n

\tAnyway, 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\u2019s performance of Octopus<\/em>, the beautiful contemporary dance show by Philpe Decoufl\u00e9\u2019s company. A friend told me he\u2019d enjoyed it but found it just pretty, immediately forgivable. Um. To him I am, therefore, what the \u2018others\u2019 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\u2019s 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. \u201cThis is a play,\u201d I told myself then, contemplating the cast\u2019s photo, \u201cI\u2019m not going to see.\u201d <\/p>\n

Too late, big mistake. I was lured by Miller\u2019s name, I should have checked the other names. Or see, perhaps, the 1948 film version with Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019m not sure why; somehow, bad films are soon forgotten, whereas bad plays, always harder to follow than films, remain stuck in our memories. I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}