Broadway style (or from Broadway) musicals are landing in force around Europe. To its spectacularity they add, at the same time but not always, evocative stories with the strength and capacity to seduce the grand public. In Spain, especially, they’re coming into fashion and there are more and more stagings of adaptations of American plays (always coming from famous box office hits and red carpet awards, it’s not a time for gambling). Today, since the 10th of February until the 8th of April, at the Teatro Español in Madrid, an adaptation of the award-winning (with seven Tony Awards) ‘Follies’. The cast is a great one, lead by Massiel (who will sing but won’t act), Muntsa RIus, Pep Molina, Vicky Peña and the veteran Carlos Hipólito, with so much experience on stage that he won’t buckle with this new and difficult challenge.

Independently of the singular staging, the richness of the costumes or the chance to insert an orchestra with nineteen professors in the orchestra pit, the story of ‘Follies’ can reach out to the grand crowd with the strength of attraction that its plot exercises, focused on loss, evocation, defeat and disappointment in love. Appearing, from darkness, Dimitri Weissman, the old director of the stage that is now looking at being demolished for the construction of a car park (a majestic metaphor of the situation of happiness through beauty and art to the most obscene materialism). He has a flashlight in his hand with which he illuminates different characters. Two retired couplet singers accompanied by their husbands evoke (followed by the spirits of those who sadly left them) the magic of the past.

At the same time they recall times which seem to be happier ones, the women allow one to see their frustrating and bland current lives. Adultery, unhappiness, neglect and routine have set in the everyday life of those who, in their day, were divas with the capacity to set the crowd on fire. There, essentially, is where the success of ‘Follies’ lies: in the strength of attraction that it exercises on the spectator, taking him around the grounds of universal and evergreen feelings.

Like I said at the beginning of this text, musicals are beginning to pave their way on the Spanish scene and we hope that, in a short space of time, we dare to go for plays and scores imported from Broadway. The Teatro Español (here is the link of the event where, also, they give good account of the news on the event http://www.teatroespanol.es/programacion_teatro_espanol_madrid/ficha/follies?id_agenda=177 , has special discounts for a few days and you have to make the most of them.

Candela Vizcaíno

The theatre programme in the Spanish capital is enriched with this production directed by Mario Gas. If you’re one of those travellers who likes theatre, you shouldn’t miss this show. Remember to book apartments in Madrid together with the tickets. You can do both online.

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