The pleasure of seeing Lloll

The address of the Maldà Theatre is 5 Pi Street, right staircase, 3rd floor, in Barcelona's Ciutat Vella district, which lends the event a clandestine air. On closer inspection, the in-person expression of culture is increasingly an act against the system of digital alienation that guides (and scatters) the attention of the masses. That a group of 54 people climb a worn staircase of an old house on a weekday evening to see a play in a venue in Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, ​​is a form of self-determination. The same self-determination being exercised by all the theatre, dance, choral, and performing groups that are rehearsing or about to perform at that hour.

The venue is very small, with the stage right there. And suddenly, Lloll Bertran, the great Lloll, appears. To that natural talent that has transcended screens, she has added over the years a mastery of acting technique that allows her to say everything with a grimace, a position of her hands or legs, a shrug of her shoulders, or short steps, all of which build the character before the words can spill over and foreshadow what's to come. It's precisely the kind of restrained acting that a theater of such intimate proportions demands, where great artistry is needed to sustain the artifice without it collapsing. And Lloll, Jordi Andújar, and Núria Cuyàs, as seasoned professionals, possess it.

Thursday's frying panCristina Clemente's play is a comedy about a major family drama that portrays late marital separations, new forms of relationships, postponed motherhood, and the general disorientation of generations who aren't living the lives they imagined. Beneath the gentleness of the text lies a lot of harsh truth. We leave entertained but pondering it. Herein lies the act of secrecy.