'The trout', the show that enchanted Emma Vilarasau and Ferran Utzet

BarcelonaTwo years ago, director Ferran Utzet and actress Emma Vilarasau were looking for allies and producers to stage an ambitious project: to bring to the stage La truita by the Frenchman Baptiste Amann, a family tragicomedy that required eight performers on stage. Finally, they found the company Bitò, the Teatre Poliorama, and the Grec Festival as accomplices, and the production is about to become a reality. La truita will be performed from June 27 to August 8 at Poliorama within the Grec and will then inaugurate this same theater, where it will have a run from September 8 to October 18, with plans to tour Catalonia in 2027. "It is a great spectacle that requires a team of phenomenal actors. We wanted to do it on a grand scale, it is demanding in terms of casting and also the scenic device," states Utzet. For the production, he has used a translation by Carles Batlle, who is the one who discovered the play to him.

The core of the story is a family consisting of a long-standing couple (played by Vilarasau and Jordi Boixaderas) and three adult daughters (played by Miranda Gas, Sara Espígul, and Júlia Bonjoch). The parents, settled in a town in inland Catalonia where they have opened an organic bakery, summon them with their respective partners (played by Arnau Puig, Marc Bosch, and Tai Fati) to celebrate the patriarch's anniversary. "There will be a great explosion of reproaches, memories, and confessions," Utzet anticipates. The trigger for the conflict will be marked by the middle daughter (Espígul), who has become lacto-pesco-vegetarian and refuses to eat the fricandó prepared by the mother. "She arrives at the meal with a river trout she bought at a fish farm on the way to the meal. This triggers a string of arguments. The parents feel that the daughters are soft, while the daughters think that the world they have left them is a disaster," explains the director.

Loneliness within the family

While awaiting further progress in the rehearsal process and observing how they construct the show, Vilarasau explains that what struck her most was the structure of the play. "It has a more realistic and everyday part and another part with monologues, some facing the audience, in which the characters recount their thoughts. This scenic form makes it very special and explains that loneliness we all have at the core of the family," the actress points out. In this regard, Utzet says that La truita" is a beautiful reflection on family, partnership, and loss" that "recalls classics like Agost by Tracy Letts, but it is much more Mediterranean." To bring it even closer to home, the director has Catalanized the characters' names, has set the story in a town "in Pla de l'Estany or Empordà," and has changed the musical references that appear.

Couple relationships also play an important role in the show. "It is the portrait of four relationships at four different moments in life. The parents have been married for 30 years. The eldest daughter is with a man 10 years younger and the show explores this significant age difference. The middle one has a long relationship with a man with whom she has a young daughter and both are very focused on their professional project, and the youngest has just paired up," Utzet details. According to the director, all the characters "create a very strong intimacy with the audience by sharing their desires and frustrations, so that everyone can feel identified".