Héctor Alterio began his farewell to the theaters with a sublime stage intervention

A standing ovation received him and a standing ovation, more grateful and consistent for the present than for his career, last night bid Héctor Alterio a standing farewell, who with his show “To Buenos Aires”, a function with which he started the first of his 12 Buenos Aires presentations with which he retires from the theater.

Accompanied by Juan Esteban Cuacci on piano, a skinny Alterio, somewhat fragile but vital, delivered last night at the Astros theater a convincing and dazzling performance in something that was neither a biographical tour nor a classic theatrical performance but rather the living connection with the word of the poets, some linked to tango and others Spanish.

Throughout the hour that the show lasts, the actor weaves together different texts that he kneads and interprets with a supreme capacity to extract from them his deepest and most revealing intonations with a naturalness that hypnotizes and amazes.

There are words of that saying, when he plays León Felipe, for example, loaded with mystery and wonder that seem to carry tons of history and time.

In a round trip between Buenos Aires and Madrid, where he spent part of his life and developed his activity after the exile that took him away from the country in 1975, he first interpreted poems linked to tango which, he says, was the poetry in which he was ” carving”.

This is how he starts with “El último organito”, by Homero Manzi, with a conviction and a beauty that restores a forgotten splendor to that tango.

And then he tackles “The world is missing a screw”, a song with lyrics by Enrique Cadícamo that Gardel popularized and that although it is old (1933) it could well be current due to the hardships it describes, regarding which Alterio allowed himself some comedy pass with Cuacci, his squire on stage, evoking that verse that says “the robust ones are over”.

After this first part, linked to all the development that his work had in the country, Alterio recounts events related to exile, the pain of leaving the country, the obligation to learn another way of speaking in order to act, until he manages to situate the anchor in León Felipe, the great Spanish poet who had to leave his country before the advance first, and then the consolidation, of the Franco dictatorship and who lived in Mexico from 1938 until his death in 1968.

From him he takes and plays with different texts until the recitation of the extensive “What a pity” arrives, a literary peak that Alterio not only climbs but also displays with a variety of intonations and with a surprising ability to give each word such strength and meaning. that all of them chained together generate a moving and unforgettable experience for the viewer.

The recitation of “What a pity” is undoubtedly the highest point of the entire show and that moment is worth everything that an actor of the dimension of Héctor Alterio can offer on stage.

Then he returns to Buenos Aires with more current poets, reads a text dedicated to Astor Piazzolla and another, “Siempre se vuelve a Buenos Aires”, by Eladia Blazquez, as well as “Theory of good wishes” by Hamlet Quintana Lima, to delve into the closing of the show and deliver at the end “Vencidos” (“through the plain of La Mancha/you see the figure/of Don Quixote pass by again”), again with León Felipe.

The show “To Buenos Aires” with which Alterio says goodbye was devised and created by his wife Angela Bacaicoa and is of great intelligence and love.

He does not reduce Alterio to the flat simplicity of the anecdote nor does he require him in theatrical commitments for which his body could be fragile, but rather he goes through his life through poetry, extracting from an interpreter of gigantic dimensions all the freedom and wisdom that built over the years to say some texts with which he dazzles and surprises.