Michael Ende's novel hit the big screen in 1984, five years after the book was published. The German production was directed by Wolfgang Petersen and featured animals created by filmmaker Colin Arthur at the Kreat FX special effects workshop in Madrid. It is there that producer Dario Regattieri has returned to commission the giant puppets that will fill the stage of the Apolo theater with the musical The Neverending Story, reproducing the imaginary that the collective memory has retained.
Regattieri affirms that this production is “the icing on the cake” of all the productions they have produced, such as The Time Between Seams, Antoine, which will soon arrive in Barcelona. Also the new production The Pillars of the Earth, which will premiere next season. “Always original productions, based on novels,” remarks the head of Beon Entertainment. “The challenge is for the public to recognize what they have read, looking for parallels with the book,” he adds.
The music has also been a challenge, because “the protagonist child requires a white voice and at these ages is when the voice changes,” says María José Santos, vocal director of the show, and that is why girls play the role of Bastian, the boy who suffers bullying at school and who will be immersed, together with the warrior Atreyu, in the mission to save the kingdom of Fantasia, from the Childish Empress. “The scores by Iván Macías (also the author of other aforementioned works) are wonderful, but they are very difficult. We have done work to define the characters and that the performers have the background for the eight weekly performances.”
The technical direction is by Pablo Santos, who details that in the work “real elements such as fire, water and snow are used”, but that what has implied a remodeling of the structure of the Apollo stage has been the use of giant animals. , “for the flights of dragons and children.” For the giant puppets articulated using the animatronic technique, three platforms have been installed, using 4 meters of depth under the stage. “Inside the dragon there are two people who activate the levers that move the dragon. Everything is handmade and only motors are used for the eyelashes,” the producer points out.
Throughout this process, the one who has had the most work has been the artistic director, Federico Barrios Fierro, since he has had to coordinate the work of the performers with the choreographies and the movements of the articulated animals: “From outside I give them the instructions to achieve the expressiveness that this verisimilitude gives them, because the puppeteers are inside and do not see how the animals move. That's why I work with three, so that one, from the outside, can observe the work of the others."
To offer The Neverending Story, “90 people who work directly or indirectly in the show are needed; There are 24 actors on stage and 9 children for the leading roles,” declares Regattieri. “And it requires ten trailers to transport all the material, so it is not feasible for it to go on tour; We are going to a theater to do the season,” she concludes.
The musical La historia interminable premieres on Wednesday, November 29, at the Apolo theater in Barcelona's Paral·lel.
