Calixto Bieito directs Pou and a large cast of Basque authors in a production with the violence and poetry of historical tragedies.
TERESA ABAJO | Monday, 7 February 2022
This week the Arriaga breathes the atmosphere of the great premieres. Erresuma/Kingdom/Reino' is a long-haul project both for its development - the director, Calixto Bieito, began taking notes in 2018 - and for the projection it will achieve on its tour of Madrid and nine other cities. Bieito has synthesised five historical tragedies by Shakespeare - 'Richard II' 'Henry IV', 'Henry V', 'Henry VI' and 'Richard III' - and transposed them to England in the 60s and 70s with all their charge of violence and poetry, on a luminous white stage that functions as an installation.
The Arriaga's artistic director, who has also created the stage space, has sought great complicity to take on this challenge. The Basque version bears the signature of Bernardo Atxaga, with whom he got on immediately when he staged his 'Obabakoak'. And the cast includes José María Pou, who enters the Shakespearean universe for the third time, always under Bieito's guidance. With him he triumphed as 'King Lear' in 2004 and also tackled 'Forests' in 2012. Here he teams up with ten Basque performers: Joseba Apaolaza, Lucía Astigarraga, Ylenia Baglietto, Ainhoa Etxebarria, Miren Gaztañaga, Iñaki Maruri, Koldo Olabarri, Lander Otaola, Eneko Sagardoy and Mitxel Santamarina. A cast "at the level of the good companies I have worked with in Europe", he assures.
Bringing eleven actors on stage in the middle of a pandemic is a challenge in itself, and the covid has forced the Basque premiere to be postponed by one day, which will be on Friday. Erresuma' will remain on stage all weekend and a fourth performance will be offered on the 24th, while in Spanish there will be seven between Thursday the 17th and Sunday the 27th of February. Pou's character, Falstaff, will be played by Mitxel Santamarina in the Basque version, although he will deliver the most famous monologue in English.
A crumbling family
Bieito is a great connoisseur of Shakespeare - he has taken plays such as 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth' all over Europe - and assures that "it can be done in all possible ways, even as a western". He conceives 'Reino' "as a child's dream, a romantic revisiting of the child within us". The plot is set in the 60s and 70s, "when there was an explosion of life in England", and real footage of the England-Germany match in 1966 will be screened. "It's based on an idea of a family that is falling apart and becoming absurd," he explains. We will see on stage "the hidden truth of dreams. I like that terrain where the dead and the living mingle, as in Richard III".
Shakespeare's historical tragedies cover a period of more than a hundred years - from 1377 to 1485 - marked by the War of the Two Roses, "a civil war between families, where everyone was related and fought and killed to have more". In his time, the author "had to use oblique angles, tricks of language to hide what he wanted to say and for the public to understand". Here they opt for a contemporary staging, an installation "close to Francis Bacon" where the actors construct their characters in a very free and intuitive way. "There is a very strong tension, a lot of revenge, a lot of war," said Ylenia Baglietto. "The spectators are not going to leave the same as they have come".
One of the big bets of this production is the translation into Basque. "Having worked on Shakespeare in other languages such as English, French, Swedish and German, I was curious to hear his words and poetic beauty in Basque, as well as in Spanish," said Bieito. For this, he has entrusted Bernardo Atxaga, who has based his work on Larrakoetxea's translation and others such as "the one made by Victor Hugo's son into French, which is canonical for all the languages of the world". The writer stressed the "depth of Shakespeare, who goes down into the basements of human nature and knows every crease of the soul and mind".
In addition to its tour of Spain - there are already dates in Pamplona, Madrid, Coruña, Santander, Seville, Valladolid, Gran Canaria, San Sebastián, Vitoria and Getxo - Bieito hopes that it will be seen in Europe, "in the theatres I usually work with. He recalls the success of 'Obabakoak' in Stuttgart, "with the audience on their feet". The mayor, Juan Mari Aburto, has highlighted the importance of this project, "a boost for local talent". He believes that Bieito "is fulfilling his goal of revolutionising the Arriaga and turning it into one of the most international symbols of our city".
Fuente: El Correo
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