The symbols of adolescent love, Romeo and Juliet, the lovers of Verona, the very young and unfortunate children of the Montagues and the Capulettos... played by two actors aged 71 and 82. For two myths of the scene. Ana Belen and Jose Luis Gomez. Now at the Teatro Español in Madrid they give life to the tragic characters of Shakespeare but recreated by the Austrian playwright Eberhard Petschinka. Returned to life 50 years after taking the poison in the family crypt, they wake up confused in Romeo and Juliet wake up...
They can finally be together. But they have lost almost all their lives. "While in Shakespeare's tragedy we see two adolescents aged 13 and 14 who end their lives because society does not allow them to love each other, here are two older people who try to rediscover love and come across a society that does not allow it ", summarizes the director of the proposal, the Swiss Rafael Sánchez.
A proposal in which, sums up Ana Belén, "there is a lot of the original text in some key moments, the ones that we all have in our imaginations." But there is much more, a reflection on what prohibits us from experiencing emotions at a certain age or on the possibility of falling in love in the twilight of life. "When the two actors realize who they are, that they have spent 50 years in a grave next to each other and have not lived, there is a revolt for lost time. And the play -says the actress- contains many paths to many reflections.
"It has to do with the passage of time, with youth, with what happens with love in the different stages of life, how you live that love when you are young, when you are old. Why do we look with a strange face when two elders, two old men, fall in love? It seems to me that there is something cruel in this society in which the mere fact of being young is already a value and should not only be value".
"The work -continues Ana Belén- takes us down different paths, different reflections. I have interpreted Shakespeare from a very young age and I have realized now that I am very old that when Shakespeare wrote female characters they were 13, 14, 15, what? how are we going to understand the depth of Shakespeare now at those ages? I don't claim to do it from our age, but it's so difficult to understand that depth being adolescents, children, pre-adolescents, it takes a bit, but a bit of life."
"The work -continues Ana Belén- takes us down different paths, different reflections. I have interpreted Shakespeare from a very young age and I have realized now that I am very old that when Shakespeare wrote female characters they were 13, 14, 15, what? how are we going to understand the depth of Shakespeare now at those ages? I don't claim to do it from our age, but it's so difficult to understand that depth being adolescents, children, pre-adolescents, it takes a bit, but a bit of life."
For the stage director, Rafael Sánchez, the son of Asturian emigrants in Switzerland and resident director at the Colonia municipal theater, "in Romeo and Juliet you never see the experience, there are young people who sometimes do not know how to speak or say Shakespeare. Perhaps we directors don't know how to explain ourselves either... But it's nice when Shakespeare is understood at all levels, very special".
José Luis Gómez, promoter of the production, and who already represented Romeo decades ago, points out that "there are some phrases at the end of the show worth taking into account. Julieta asks Romeo: 'Do you think that fiery looks only come when You're young, when you're beautiful?' And Romeo says after shaking his head: 'So they say'. She repeats: 'Yes, they say that...'".
"The work -he concludes- deals very well with love when one is very old, I think it is a very beautiful and relatively unusual perspective, because yes, it exists, and an unspeakable love is possible when one is old, when one has gone from the sixties and the seventies and the eighties, yes, it is possible. And a wonderful love. I can say it from experience. I would say that ineffable, miraculous".
The two performers are accompanied on stage by a band of musicians who perform songs at times when something, they say, can only be understood through music. David San José, son of Ana Belén, explains that "we have been creating music little by little on stage, it is eclectic, nothing vintage, there is everything from bolero to jazz". The show can be seen until June 4 at the Spanish theater, but last week José Luis Gómez will be replaced by Jesús Noguero.
