Wednesday 8 February 2012

Cultural weekends ...


Prior to having been operated I still managed to fit in some cultural venues. Weekends are mostly dedicated to "wandering" about the city in search of some "cultural balance" ... that my daily routine at the airport does not "contemplate" and the truth is I do need that balance ...



Theatre has been playing a major role in this "required" balance of mine, particularly since Mia has decided to be a Theatre actress, though I can't ignore the fact that it also did many years ago when my father, then a journalist and Theatre critic, was still alive. 

Many people state that going to the Teatre is somehow more expensive than going to the cinema, but if this was true a few years ago, it no longer is ... and then there is the pleasure of becoming part of what is happening on stage and such a similar experience one can rarely have whilst watching a film.

"Herodiades" by Giovanni Testori (1923-93), an intense variation on the death of John Baptist, translated by Miguel Serras Pereira, having had Jorge Silva Melo as artistic director and just one actor (Elmano Sancho) on stage is worth going to.

The performance is outstanding, if one takes into account the fact that any monologue, especially one that lasts for two hours, can be discouraging for the public. Throughout the whole performance Elmano took us into "his" troubled world of thoughts, hesitations, remembrances  ... and craziness.

We all stood up and aplauded for what sounded like endless hours. Elmano, whom I have known since he and Mia studied together at the University of Cinema and Theatre, is a well recognized actor, but I personally consider this to be his best performance so far.




  



"Design for living" by Noël Coward (1899-1973) a comedy on a stormy and rather complicated love triangle on stage at Comuna, with Carlos Vieira, João Tempera, Rita Calçada Bastos and Carlos Paulo in the major roles and Mia Farr, Maria Marques and Hugo Franco in the secondary ones,  is worth being seen.

Having been translated by Paula Seixas with Alvaro Correia in charge of the mise-en-scène it is not only very well performed  (though the two major male characters, whose presence on stage is more "visible", naturally create a different "bond" with the public) but an updated version of nowadays "delicate reality in which people gravitate around the light like butterflies, incapable of sharing it with the others, whom they constantly collide with", as in accordance with the author's own words (written back in 1939). 




   


"Design for living"  was officially censured in London and considered inaceptable, thus having been forbidden to be staged until 1939, whilst the first attempted incursion in the theatrical world by Testori with  L. Arialda was considered obscene, having also been censured (a rather interesting detail).








 

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