This Thursday, the Canal Theatres experienced the birth of their new era. The launching of the ship designed by the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Sports of the Community of Madrid, Mariano de Paco. Ten months after the presentation of his new model, the moment has arrived when words and the struggle for discourse end, and the moment of truth begins, which is none other than that of the stage. The curtain has risen and has risen with The Mayor of Zalamea by Calderón de la Barca, directed by José Luis Alonso de Santos. And the premiere did not disappoint. The melancholic loop that the proposal represents is of such magnitude that the direction of these theaters has been clearly outlined.
The Mayor of Zalamea is, with Life is a dream the most performed work of the 17th century author. A drama of honor that began as The best given club and which has one of the best versifications of the Golden Age, and with one of its great characters, the villain Pedro Crespo.
The story is well known: troops on their way to war in Portugal are stationed in the town of Zalamea, in Extremadura. The captain of the troops, Don Álvaro (Javier Lara), rapes the daughter of the peasant Pedro Crespo (Arturo Querejeta) who, recently appointed mayor of the town, proposes to the captain to marry him. The captain rejects the offer and demands that he be handed over to the army where he will appear in a court martial, over which he has no jurisdiction. Crespo refuses, judges him and executes him with a garrote. Finally, King Philip II arrives and seeing that “it has already been done”, he judges that “it does not matter who has the most right to be the least wrong” and appoints Crespo mayor for life.
The play has several dialogues between Crespo and Don Lope de Figueroa (Daniel Albadalejo), a military hero of the Third Estate, which are among the best writings in Spanish theatrical literature. There is also a tragic hero like Crespo, full of the good sense of simple Spanish, and a well-structured drama in three days that makes possible the action and the rhythm.
At the press conference, José Luis Alonso de Santos said about the work: “It is still relevant, it is not possible that dignity is no longer fashionable,” referring to the theme of the work and the perpetual debate about the meaning of the classics in the present.
The Mayor of Zalamea It is a drama of honor and dignity, as the author from Valladolid points out. It is perhaps one of the works of the Golden Age that deals with honor in a more contemporary way. Today’s viewer can fully identify, despite his contradictions, with the character of Crespo. The labor conflict is the injustice and the struggle of the people against excessive and poorly exercised power. A conflict that continues to rage today, as it has for 300 years. But the problem with this montage is not that, but something else.
No forgiveness
The Spanish Golden Age is, in a somewhat vague analogy, our true western. In 1992, Clint Eastwood released No forgivenessa film that also has plot similarities with Calderón’s work. The film marked a renaissance of the genre. The themes of the artistic genres are always the same: love, dignity, injustice, freedom. A little more. No forgiveness Today it is one of the cathedrals of the Western, not because of the story it tells, but because of the way it is filmed, because of the cinematographic language. However, in this production by Alonso de Santos, the scenic language is not from another era, but simply flatter than the entire Iberian plateau.
The scenes are always composed looking at the audience, with an extreme frontality that disdains space, volumes, composition, background. Something that the actors try to save as best they can. It is worth stopping at the cast of this production. The director has one of the most powerful poker aces in the acting cinema of this country. The dialogues between Albadalejo and Arturo Querejeta are, for example, wonderful. But it is sad, knowing what these two actors are capable of, to see them hieratic, without handfuls of spatial and compositional play, condemned to save scene after scene.
This is also the case of Jorge Basanta, who plays the soldier Rebolledo, or Isabel Rodes who plays the role of Chispa, a talkative and lively woman who accompanies the thirds. Rodes and Basanta represent half the life of our classical theater: the Young National Company of Classical Theater, the November Theater of Eduardo Vasco, Helena Pimenta, Eva del Palacio. Albadalejo and Querejeta, more difficult, have done everything, they are in the other average. The poker is completed by Javier Lara, who becomes more determined every day in the verse.
Thus, Isabel Rodes, for example, capable of giving life to any character, is seen and desired to be able to compose a Spark that reaches and transcends. The mayor’s daughter, Isabel, is played by a young actress, Adriana Ubani., that the director leaves clearly helpless in one of the most sincere scenes of the work, the one where, lost in a forest, she tells her father how she was raped. In the scene, Ubani stumbles over a large tree that dominates the stage – who knows what they will do with it on tour -, trying to give body to one of the most delicate moments of the work. There is no way. The important thing is that the scene reaches the forefront and that an insignificant frontal painting is composed.
We can imagine that a theatrical tendency will praise this production for the quality of some verses, for the presence of Querejeta, capable of facing any scene. But we already knew the abilities of this actor. The problem is what is expected of the scene. Although we want to hear the romance and the cockade correctly, or we also aspire to be able to attend a dramaturgical proposal.
Alonso de Santos’ version is very respectful, the text applies. But it is doubtful that it is a commitment to a certain theatrical classicism, like the one that José Tamayo or Gustavo Pérez Puig had in theory in the 1950s. The writer was not able to see these montages, but it seems logical to think that Tamayo, the great director of those years, and even Pérez Puig, would act, compose and move the scene a little more.
The proposals for this work that we have seen in recent years have been numerous, directors such as Eduardo Vasco, Álvaro Tato or Sergi Belbel have undertaken them with varying degrees of success. The last proposal was that of the Teatro Corsario; Even this assembly, with a budget ten times lower than this one, had more play in the intention.
An example: at the beginning of the century, one of the directors most aware of the importance of dramaturgy in staging, Ángel Facio, recently deceased, staged this same work with the Higher School of Dramatic Art of Murcia. This assembly arrived in Almagro. And although, in the end, Facio lost his mind and instead of the arrival of King Philip II, Bill Clinton arrived with his wife while the people waved the flags of the United States, the play, with the budgetary and actress limitations of the staging, was a playground where this director embroidered popular scenes of songs and union between the people and the soldiers. A success where Facio proposed a vision in which society was not separated by class, but by pure social class. In Alonso de Santos’ production, the songs of the play, the Jacarandine or the hovering at the window of Crespo’s daughter, goes unnoticed and there is no reading behind the scenes.
The old thirds
The ideologue of this new scene of these theatres led by this premiere is the Minister of Culture of the Community of Madrid, Mariano de Paco, who, following the president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, seems to want to compete with the cultural actors of the national level. establishments. There is for example the creation of the Spanish Ballet of the Community of Madrid. Another example: De Paco, in the presentation of the work, during the press conference, declared: “A golden age, which as the president of the Community of Madrid announced during the debate on the state of the region, we are going to declare “asset of cultural interest in the category of intangible heritage”.
This montage seems to want to follow this model of Madrid as a canton of the great Spain. This mayor of Zalamea took control of a great production of the National Classical Theatre Company (CNTC). With one difference, De Paco hired an irrelevant director, Alonso de Santos. Said with all due respect to one of the most important authors of the theatre of the eighties, Alonso de Santos never made a name for himself in the field of directing. Not even when he directed the CNTC for four years – we still remember that Peribánez and the Commander of Ocaña 2002― nor recently. The last production of this director in Matadero of a work written by himself, In the dark heart of the forestcould have given De Paco an idea of the limits.
At this point, it is not clear whether some politicians in the institution are more motivated than Calderón to bring the flag of the former Spanish thirds to the stage. As highlighted by the statements of the deputy of the Assembly of the Community of Madrid Pedro Corral in a tweet after the press conference of the work: “An honor to accompany with the Tercios Viejos the maestro José Luis Alonso de Santos, director of “The Mayor of Zalamea”Corral said.
Luis María Anson, whenever this author was mentioned in the pages of La Razón, called him “the socialist José Luis Alonso de Santos”. I don’t know what adjective I would use today. The native of Valladolid who today walks the corridors of these new Teatros del Canal has been appointed assistant director. At 82, he will be able to continue directing plays with his son Daniel, who signs the assistant directorship.
Furthermore, during the presentation of the season, it was indicated that Alonso de Santos himself has the final say in programming. The author and director does not have the vocation to travel to discover new gems to program. Rather, it is a coordination work in which Ruperto Merino, director of the theater and right-hand man of Mariano de Paco, is behind it, who continues to exert his influence on all the activities of the performing arts dependent on the Community of Madrid.
The season of this new theater therefore begins with a somewhat changed foot. We will have to wait for the new bets of the associate directors of the theater. In October, it will arrive Miss White as a commitment of the management in the performing arts; in February, Albert Boadella and in March, Ainhoa Amestoy, with the challenge of staging one of the most difficult works of Valle-Inclán, The horns of Don Friolera, surprising choice. For now, the mayor of Zalamea will be on display until October 13.
