I wrote it before Ridley Scott shot his film,” warns Ramon Madaula about his work Els Buonaparte, which premieres on December 20 at the Akadèmia theater. “In addition, the film does not touch on the subject of Spain. Napoleon said that Spain was his Achilles heel. He comes to Spain with the first failure, Bailén, and José tells him that the Spanish had to be known. Pepe Botella is the only good king we have had,” points out the playwright who, exceptionally, has the direction of Sílvia Munt for the first time in his work. “We each like to have our space, and this is an exception,” declares the director of this historical comedy, about her relationship.
“I have been very happy because there is very good material, which allows us to get to know characters that are difficult to analyze. We literally left them in their underwear,” Munt continues. “Els Buonaparte is not about explaining the battles, but rather, starting from a specific night, he wants to understand these very different personalities. It is a dialectical and human combat, between two ways of understanding the world, in a more fragile way and a harder one, more of a survivor.”
Napoleon is Pau Roca, José I is David Bagés, who was a year older than his brother, and the servant Rustam is Oriol Guinart, “who is the practical part and provides a third, almost feminine perspective,” says the director. The night in question happens in Vitoria, when José, defeated in the battle of Bailén, leaves Madrid and takes refuge in the north. There he receives a visit from his brother, who reproaches him for having left and orders him to return. They spend the night talking and the next day King Joseph returns to the capital.
“They are two of the most important men in history, who get to do the worst things,” Munt continues. The border between admiration and monster is very thin. Napoleon wanted them to be republican kings. And the bathtub, which presides over the stage where Napoleon bathed every night to wash away his worries, was his diazepam.”
Madaula explains how it occurred to him to write about Napoleon and Joseph Bonaparte, from a Corsican family, born just when France bought the island from the Republic of Genoa. Buonaparte became Bonaparte, as did Napoleon's name, which was also Frenchized. In the play, he addresses his brother with the name Giuseppe.
“The seed of Els Buonaparte is the story of two brothers who are very clumsy when it comes to loving each other,” says Madaula. They were a year apart and played a lot as children. I believe that little is said about sibling relationships in fiction and they attract me, because they are very complex.”
“Napoleon only spent two months in Spain, in the five years that the war of independence lasted,” the author continues. He comes from Paris expressly to scold his brother for having abandoned the throne of Madrid. The two of them were alone, arguing all that night, in an isolated place in Vitoria. It is not known what they said to each other, but it can be deduced from everything that happened and from the correspondence that is preserved.”
Regarding the fact of presenting them in such a naked, human way, without the trappings of power, the playwright reasons: “Two brothers can be in their underwear, even if they were two of the most powerful men in the world. Rustam was Napoleon's shadow, like his bodyguard, confidant, half-lover of him, she slept with him. Rustam, a Georgian of Armenian origin, inseparable from Napoleon, provides that third point of view in Madaula's piece.
The playwright emphasizes that “half of what is said is documented.” And he adds: “Napoleon's problem is that he wanted to impose the Enlightenment by force, and Pepe by reason. Napoleon was Mediterranean, with a great sense of humor, not like Joaquin Phoenix, everything inward, although I admire him a lot as an actor,” Madaula clarifies.
“Of all the tyrants in history, he is the best tyrant, because the United States of America had been created and there had been the French Revolution, and they would have wanted to found the United States of Europe, but they did not succeed,” he concludes.
Catalan version, here
