A demanding tragedy for active viewers

Is the urge to commit suicide inherited? Can a mother pass this urge on to her child? Is there something genetic about suicide? Based on these questions, and shortly after becoming a mother, British playwright Alice Birch wrote Anatomy of a suicide, premiered in 2017 at the Royal Court in London under the direction of the acclaimed Katie Mitchell, and now arrives at the TNC at a carefully curated address by Glòria Balañà.

Birch doesn't pretend to answer the questions because she's neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist. Instead, they serve to construct a kind of tragedy about three generations of women marked by a cursed legacy that nullifies their lives. She does so with a formal interplay that develops the three stories simultaneously on stage over the course of two and a half hours of non-stop entertainment.

The triptych begins in the 1970s with Carol (Marta Ossó) leaving the hospital after a suicide attempt. Twenty-five years later, her daughter Anna (Maria Ribera) is a poly-drug addict permanently unbalanced and redeemed by a good man and a baby. Fifty years later, Carol's granddaughter, Bonnie (Patrícia Bargalló), a nurse who bears the weight of history, will think about how to end the curse.

Anatomy of a suicide It's a rather demanding proposal for the audience. It demands, in fact, that active spectatorship that playwright José Sanchis Sinisterra spoke of. Adding to the complexity of the stage's simultaneousness is the lack of clear connections between the three stories until well into the performance, or the certain disconnection (despite the wonderful soundtrack compiled by Àlex Polls) caused by the fifteen transitions. This attention is rewarded when one embraces the proposed formal play and connects with the musical meaning of a text with rhythmic repetitions, broken phrases, and which enhances the dramatic power of silences.

Glòria Balañà's gaze is of considerable coldness amalgamated with tragic will, but it stands out in the direction of the performers and in particular of the actresses of a play that is theirs and in which the drama of Maria Ribera, the grieving innocence and sweet innocence and the hurt innocence and the hurt innocence of Patrícia Bargalló and the empathic energy of Ester Cort shine.