Son Puig-gros is not a metaphor

PalmSon Puig-gros is the farm that Miquel, who played the piglet when he was a child, obtained with the profits from a souvenir in Palmanova. He has become the lord of the great estate and its hundreds of quartered estates. In Son Puig-gros, the new lords hold a dinner to celebrate the event with friends, family, former owners, and neighbors. This is the contextual region where the story ofThe butchers, by Guillem Frontera, his first novel, for which he was awarded the Ciutat de Palma Prize. It was 1969, when we all thought that a bright new world was opening up before our eyes, while the young former student of La porciúncula, aspiring poet and budding novelist, saw and explained to us what none of us were capable of seeing, intuiting, or anything similar. Therefore, The butchers It is not a premonitory work nor Son Puig-gros, merely a metaphor, but evidence that the horn of plenty came with a toll, many tariffs and no turning back.

More than fifty years later, Miquel Mas Fiol, with the help of Producciones de Hierro, takes it upon himself and rubs in our faces a sentence that doesn't hurt, but is deeply offensive, such as "he told you so", which, of course, Frontera never uttered. In any case, for many reasons, The Butchers It will always be a hyperrealistic portrait of a world that, as the play predicts, is no longer and will never again be what it was. On the other hand, a translation from the novel to the stage always presents no small number of difficulties, not only due to fidelity to the original, but also due to obvious language issues. But Fiol, with only three actors: Catalina Florit, Xavi Frau, and Lluís Febrer, not only tells the story of many more than three characters, but also has them directly tell the audience the what and the why of everything, beyond the dialogue. Much more, since the performance begins as a program and the presentation of the protagonists, who, by the way, effusively recommend reading the text by the director and author of the translation and dramaturgy that appears on paper, which is also much more than a declaration of principles.

"Originality, fidelity, and precision" could be an appropriate title. Originality for such a peculiar structure and packaging. Fidelity, because on stage nothing is missing from what the author wrote, adding some poetic or other license, such as a waiter becoming a waitress, which makes the situation even more compelling, and the actors even interacting with the director, but everything is there. Precision, because there is not the slightest doubt, at any moment in the play, as to who is who and where and in what situation or place they find themselves, which, in addition to a careful translation and always with the same set, requires three protagonists capable of changing roles and all their circumstances in a split second and with an efficiency that, to round it off, not even...

PS - I would see it again right now.