Andy Warhol's Laboratory Love

The strategy of using a well-known title as a hook in proposals centered around popular works is legitimate, but in the case of this A Midsummer Night's Dream I believe it is, above all, an act of honesty and recognition that Àlex Rigola's dramaturgy is indebted to Shakespeare's genius and Salvador Oliva's excellent translation, even though very little remains of both. Little, but fundamental. Because what Rigola has imagined is a dynamic, jovial, daring, and at the same time, very delicate performance about love, one of the themes – perhaps the main one – of the great bard's fairy comedy.

And not just any love, because the young lovers fleeing Athens to enjoy love in the forest (Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius) are here two veteran couples brought to life masterfully by Muntsa Alcañiz, Oriol Genís, Xesca Piñón, and Toni Sevilla from an admirable and quiet old age. A wonderful counterpoint to the wild and musical play of the fairies commanded by Oberon/Andy Warhol (Lluís Villanueva). The four lovers enter the world of The Factory and Rigola identifies the usual characters of the famous New York creative laboratory with those of Shakespeare's work. Thus, a Puck (energetic David Menéndez) who raps with the air of Freddie Mercury is also Gerard Malanga, Warhol's indispensable collaborator; Titania (Biel Duran) is also Warhol's famous photographer, Billy Name; the artisans of the comedy preparing a play are a group of seventies rockers evoking The Velvet Underground who accompany the evening with classics of the genre. All in all, it is true, a bit confusing if you are not told.

The fidelity to the original is absolute in the words of these elderly lovers who wander around in their dressing gowns, and I strongly suspect it is not so much in the rest of the characters, modified by a dramaturgy that also summons the totems of the counterculture of the sixties and seventies in the United States (Truman Capote, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg...). Many characters and twelve performers on the small theatre stage. A daring scenic adventure, very well directed and finished with a brilliant play of love by the lovers.