The thing, a "guesamcunstverq"

PalmaLos Estunmen arrive at the Teatros del Canal after passing through the Lliure de Barcelona with all the blessings and approval of the Liceu and the Real, but with reticences as if a product of these characteristics did not yet have enough guarantees to be performed in the ancestral homes. Perhaps they are only prejudices, which is not understood after having seen in the grand house, in both and in many more, some operatic creation that was “amazing”. It is clear that the progenitors of the creature, Nao Albet and Marcel Borràs, have played the role - which is also a game that fits perfectly with this baby - of transgression and they announce it from the title. Els estunmen is nothing more than the pronunciation of the stuntmen, the specialists, the doubles of the protagonists, those who are there and pretend to be. The capos, Albet and Borràs, say it is an opera and they are surely right and have reasons to classify it within this genre, where contemporaneity always finds almost insurmountable barriers. The music is by Fernando Velázquez, who instead of transgressing creates a precise and fitting alloy of quite a few operatic eras, although if the story speaks, among many other things, of heroes, who better than Wagner as a great source of inspiration. For this, and for many other things, we are facing a guesamcunstverq, which is how the total work of art preached by the gentleman of Bayreuth is pronounced.

Theater, music, singers, actors, specialists, live masters, in Madrid the members of the Joven Orquesta Nacional de España, directed by the composer, form an elaborate and extraordinary musical, argumentative, and dramaturgical upheaval, which turns the spectacle into a kaleidoscope where we can find, because they are there, elements from tragedy, both classical and contemporary, to humor, of a finesse that does not tear the discourse apart, neither little nor much. The "thing" gives no respite, because it goes from tragedy to comedy with supreme fluidity and agility, which makes everything, perfectly mixed and very well stirred, begin its spin from a first violent absolutely cinematic sequence, "made in Tarantino", whose influences they do not hide, but quite the opposite, to then become contrite with what will come next. That's not all, because what comes next is what comes after the continuation. A reflection on doubles, so essential, even though they are never seen, a precise dissection of the figure of the hero, a melodramatic puzzle with the family as a twin - a bit of Tennessee Williams, for example? - a board on which a whole display of genres appears - masculine, feminine, binary, non-binary... - and even a few drops of metatheatre, which in some way links everything together, until it turns it into a spectacle, of great dimensions, entertaining, original, intelligent and profound, the kind that leaves no one indifferent, with a final specialist flourish, which made the Sala Roja echo with the same intensity as all that we had thoroughly enjoyed in the previous two hours.