The joy that happens
Author: Marc Rosich, based on the work of Santiago Rusiñol.
Direction: Marc Rosich.
Music and musical direction: Andreu Gallén.
Performers: Mariona Castillo, Jordi Coll, Júlia Genís, Eloi Gómez, Àngels Gonyalons, Pol Guimerà, Basem Nahnouh, Pau OIiver, David Pérez-Bayona.
Place and date: Poliorama Theater (6/III/2023).
It is difficult to say goodbye at the height of the mark that is left. A farewell worthy of Antaviana, Nit de Sant Joan, Glups, El Mikado, Mar i cel, Flor de nit, T'odio amor meu or Aloma. The history of Catalan musical theater is also invited to the premiere of L'alegria que passa, the latest new production by Dagoll Dagom, and invisibly occupies its seats at the Poliorama. A full house with good vibes. The shared illusion that such a special night ends with a well-deserved success. Advance: it is.
The trajectory that began 49 years ago began to close on March 6 with a brilliant coda: a musical that thoroughly reviews the lyrical painting of Santiago Rusiñol and Enric Morera. From that first great success of the author of L'Hèroe, Marc Rosich has preserved the plot, the main characters and a certain air of an unreal fable. But that symbolic combat between prose and poetry has taken on a darker, almost dystopian appearance. The 19th century town, self-absorbed in its laziness and suspiciously receiving a troupe of traveling artists, mutated into a gray industrial colony that congregates in the old sports hall to participate in the entertainment organized by the factory owner and mayor. The vision of a poor district from The Hunger Games. A gray town that Ariadna Peya moves with the dehumanized mechanical cadence of the workers of Metropolis.
L'alegria que passa borrows from the genre's past elements of backstage music, the crude farce of operettas like Dürrenmatt's Frank V and Chicago 70s erotica; and of the present, the vindication of the urban culture of Hamilton, the melancholy of Hadestown and the concept of musicians-actors of John Doyle's Company, La filla del mar by La Barni or Golfus de Roma by Daniel Anglès. All unified by a score by Andreu Gallén that eludes explicit tributes, between electronica and pop classicism. Themes that are remembered Peya's work also participates in this feeling of a solid ensemble. If the pure choreographies are good, in which voguing or breakdancing coexist with their own choreographic language, the stage movement is better. A continuum that flows from scene to scene. A live morphing effect.
Rosich, in line with the gloomy tone of the rereading, proposes more mature and carnal characters than those created by Rusiñol. Now everyone is trying to overcome their reality, with failure on the horizon. Thus, the 18-year-old Zaira of the original is presented as a broken toy of show business. Femme fatale out of desperation, fed up with the violence of Cop-de-puny (Jordi Coll). Mariona Castillo singing like a tired diva. An example of the change marked by the dramaturgy that places the female characters under the focus of the drama. Thus, Júlia Genís' Agneta emerges as the only role that decides to take control of her destiny. Her mirror is the character played by Eloi Gómez, the rebel with a cause of his community, the romantic revolutionary. More than a new character, a split of the personality of Joanet (Pau Oliver), who loses the symbolic centrality that Rusiñol entrusted to her.
Dense, emotional characters, well interpreted in a practically complete musical that also holds a surprise: serving as an elegant and emotional tribute to the figure of Àngels Gonyalons. Rosich has not only entrusted him with the double role of Clown and mayor (both tough, the first survives with sarcasm, the second with the violence of power) so that he can display all his talent before the public, he also reserves a special number for him. to evoke that Gonyalons that for a time was the epitome of the musical in Barcelona. She responds enthusiastically to that gift. Just to see her in that fullness is worth bowing to this excellent farewell to her.
