'A Set Meal': Masculinities That Don't Know How to Cry

Although most newspapers today carry ostentatious culinary guides from supposed experts for hungry gourmets and wealthy snobs, I don't think there's anything like the one a starred chef prepares for his friends at the Villarroel restaurant.

Oriol (Joan Arqué) prepares a three-course menu that, eschewing the pleasure that good cooking can provide, is intended to shock Eduard (Roger Coma) and Mateu (Òscar Muñoz). He wants to stir them until they cry. And Jordi Casanovas's new proposal speaks to us of the most atavistic masculinity, but quite current in generations of the 80s and 90s. It is that masculinity that childishly and name by name remembers the alienation of Barça, winner of I don't know what cup (nor do I care), that understands life as a competition against the world and is incapable of embracing a friend who is going through a moment of great pain and telling him that he loves him or of crying at his mother's funeral.

They are three friends, three profiles lost in the labyrinth of repressed emotions. The lack of affinity with Oriol's father, the fear of making mistakes and the fragility of Mateo or the stupidity of the macho Eduardo - incapable of getting emotional watching Pack (Casanovas's work on the Manada). But the most elaborate dish on this theatrical menu is the comedy, and here Casanovas's skill in the gag and in keeping the attention with unexpected twists stands out. Lázaro García has understood this very well when directing. He doesn't renounce the just right exaggeration that draws laughter, modulates the theoretically most dramatic moments and completely succeeds in the movement around the magnificent professional kitchen that presides over the stage space (José Novoa).

Roger Coma is the Augustus of comedy, very well flanked by a Joan Arqué who has a lot of experience in playing the white clown (Rumination) and the good old Contra Augusto by Òscar Muñoz. Finally, diner humor without the gastronomical elaborations, because a potato omelet is a potato omelet (with or without onions).