Pol López's "irreverent prank" at La Villarroel

BarcelonaFor some time, actor Pol López wanted to reunite with Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh (London, 1970), one of the most over-the-top playwrights on the contemporary scene. In 2017, the actor played the lead role in The Connemara Skull, which was performed at La Villarroel under the direction of Iván Morales. Two years later, McDonagh returned to the Catalan stage with The beauty queen of Leenane, directed by Julio Manrique at the Biblioteca. Audiences familiar with the Anglo-Irish playwright's earlier works know what to expect: politically incorrect characters, dark humor, a tension on the stage that's about to explode, and surprising twists and turns one after another. This is precisely what's brewing in The hand, which arrives this Saturday at La Villarroel translated by Martí Sales, under the direction of Pau Carrió and starring Pol López.

"McDonagh is an extraordinary author. He is a genre in himself. He has such a powerful personality that it's hard to compare him with others," says Carrió. Written in 2010 (En behanding in Spokane) and adapted to Catalan with the title of The handThis is the playwright's first play set in the United States. The action takes place in a seedy hotel where the protagonist (López) has arranged a meeting to make a pact. The man's hand was cut off 27 years ago and, ever since, he has been obsessively searching for it. A pair of small-time drug dealers (Mia Sala-Patau and Soribah Ceesay) have convinced him that they have it and will give it to him in exchange for money.

"All characters are marked by something, but for Carmichael, the wound is physical: he's missing a hand. He lives in a dead end. He wants to resolve this situation, but he knows it's unsolvable. Even though he knows it won't do him any good, he can't stop chasing the hand," explains López. The actor embodies a man obsessed to the extreme, who endangers his antagonists. "They are the most normal characters in the play, unconscious young people who encounter an unbalanced person," says Sala-Patau.

A bellboy who changes everything

The fourth wheel is the hotel bellboy (Albert Prat), a man who hasn't had much luck in life and has never been loved by anyone. "When he intervenes, it radically changes the situation," says the director, who adds that all the characters "are odious and at the same time lovable; you can tell that McDonagh loves them." The union of this peculiar group of people turns The hand in "an irreverent and politically incorrect prank, with very strange situations and unfiltered characters," says Villarroel's director, Tania Brenlle.

Precisely, one of the distinctive features of McDonagh's work is the portrayal of characters "with racist, misogynistic, and homophobic responses" and who "have caused him problems with censorship," explains Carrió. But the playwright is not looking for provocation per se, but rather works "to portray a reality that exists and is extraordinarily theatrical," the director adds. All of this is done with special care for the language, which, despite sometimes being harsh and offensive, "is full of layers and meanings," says Carrió, who sums up the show this way: "It's a narrative game that functions as a kind of dollhouse of extraordinary perfection, where everything ends up connecting."