Another success of Parking Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is a mystery. We know when he was baptized, but not when he was born. There was some doubt about whether he was the author of the plays he signs. We don't know exactly how many he wrote. No original works have survived because they were burned in the Globe fire. First Folio (the first collection of Shakespeare's plays) was published by two of the company's actors nine years after his death. Word's spell checker ignores the existence of Cymbeline. You will understand, then, that if I affirm that Cymbeline (1610), one of the last plays he wrote, had never been premiered in our country, much less in Catalan. I may be mistaken. Or not. And, in this case, the Parking Shakespeare company has the honor of giving the world premiere in Catalan (warning: it's not in the extensive program of the Grec, go see why) of this comedy with the seal and imagination of the great Bard in a very playful version that, given the turn towards the clown, It delights the audience sitting in the elliptical stands of the Parque de la Estación del Norte on an afternoon when a light breeze blows and the heat seems to have receded.

Cymbeline It is a comedy in which ideas and dramatic resources from Shakespeare's earlier works resonate in a convoluted plot between Britain, Rome and Milford. Romeo and Juliet; there is female transvestism such as Two Gentlemen of Verona oh Twelfth Night; there is the trap of the protagonist's infidelity that Iago exploits in Othello; there is the evil of a queen like Macbeth.

The play begins with the love marriage of the king's daughter and a commoner. This entails the subsequent anger of the queen, who wanted to establish her lanky son, and of the king, who rejects a poor son-in-law and banishes him to Italy. Jenny Beacraft's version is very clear and easy to understand, with a narrator who occasionally explains what has happened and what is about to happen. The direction is faithful to the letter, serving the action, without neglecting the details, but with the exaggeration that the world of clowning and the open air requires. The eight actors do everything. They double or triple their roles. Fantastic. Note the costumes by Berta Riera, essential in the multiple changes and in the overall conception of the play. Highly recommended popular theater.