Joel Joan: The goal is to entertain

After the successes achieved with the two installments of Escape Room and with the scripts written for Joan Pera (El pare de la núvia and Júnior), the playwright Joel Joan ratifies his devotion to entertainment comedy. He does so within the parameters expressed a few days ago by Eugenio Barba at the opening act of the Institut del Teatre's academic year, where he stated that the mission of theater is to entertain (something quite different from what Ingmar Bergman maintained at the beginning of Fanny and Alexander, when, over the face of the child looking at the puppet theater, we read: "Not just to entertain"). Barba, founder and soul of the Odin Teatret, recalled that modern theater is born when a company puts tickets for a show on sale, and said: "First one must live, because otherwise there is no theater or art."

Joel Joan, therefore, fully agrees with this idea, although his works differ—and greatly—from the proposals of Barba, who at 92 years old began a new tour this week. Joel Joan wants to entertain his followers, who are not few. To a large extent, he succeeds with a classic-style comedy from the marriage subgenre that invites some friends to dinner, and some surprise revolutionizes the meal and the relationships.

The author says in the program that we are all good and bad, that it depends on the circumstances. Well, the five characters who star in the play are, in the end, neither good nor bad, but a bit wretched. Ricard (Joel Joan) is one, who at fifty wants to be reborn as a seductive male. His wife Clàudia (Agnès Busquets) is another, who is disillusioned with the marriage and has turned to the bottle for whatever comes. The naive and sickly kind Jesús (Oriol Casals) is another, who has finally found love with a frustrated photographer (Nesa Vidaurrázaga). Young Amàlia, who bursts into the evening, is another.

If the introductory part of the character presentation distills a rather crude humor that does not always work, the play improves with the entrance of Amàlia. From there, it goes to a magnificently zany ending where the direction of an expert in the field, Nelson Valente, stands out, with five good performers well-suited to their roles.