“I am returning to Buenos Aires because what attracts me most are the extraordinary actors and an audience that is up to the task,” says the director of theater Catalan Luis Pasqual, who opened the weekend at San Martín “The Great Illusion”.
This is his own version of the complex and endearing piece of Eduardo De Filippoa bitter comedy that questions the boundaries between reality and fiction while showing to what extent life is a game and decisions are irrelevant.
It has a cast made up of Marcelo Subiotto, Patricia Echegoyen, Pablo Mariuzzi, Alejandra Radano, Nacho Gadano, Elvira Onetto, Yanina Gruden, Paco Gorriz, Pablo Razuk, Santiago Sirur and Ignacio Sureda. Musicians also participate Santiago Sirur (singer), Shino Ohnaga (accordion), German Martinez (guitar) and Ernestina Inveninato (violin and mandolin). The cast is completed with the performers Emma Peyla and Light Benavento.
The local adaptation of the text is by Fernanda Cavathe lighting of Omar San Cristobal, the design and adaptation of the scenography of Vanessa Abramovich and the costume design of Renata Schussheim.
It will be presented at the Casacuberta hall from Wednesday to Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and Sundays at 7:30 p.m. We spoke with Pasqual.
Journalist: What is it about today’s world that makes a work written after the Second World War relevant?
Luis Pasqual: There is a character who, shortly after the start of The Great Illusion, says “Today everyone lives in a world of illusion”… Nothing could be more true yet. Just in case, the so-called social networks remind us of this at every turn.
Q: How did you adapt the original to this version, what is your imprint?
LP: Translating Eduardo is extremely complicated because he is an author who combines standard Italian with various dialects, basically Neapolitan. Finding the right expression first in Spanish and then translating it into another more Argentine Spanish, which I have fortunately done with some help, has been a beautiful and very rewarding job because if we look at it schematically in Buenos Aires I have always had the impression that Italian is spoken with Spanish words. The musicality that your Spanish has is Italian.
Q: What are the themes of the work?
LP: Fortunately for me, Eduardo de Filippo explained very well what he wanted to do and I stuck to it. “This is what I wanted to say. That life is a game, and this game has to be fed by illusion, which has to be sustained by faith. And I also wanted to say that any destiny is tied to the thread of other destinies in an eternal game: a great game of which we are only given to glimpse irrelevant details.”
Q: What attracts you to come and put on a show at San Martín? How do you see theatre in Buenos Aires?
LP: What has always interested me most about theatre is the actors. That is what attracts me to come to Argentina. You have extraordinary actors and an audience that is up to par. Everything I have said before cannot be done without a magnificent cast, which is what I have. With two great soloists at the helm.
Q: Among many others, you directed that Tempest that no one can forget. What can you say about these times in contrast to the present?
LP: The world is certainly worse off. Or so we perceive. But this country has, amazingly, preserved its love of theatre intact.
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Q: How did you think about the staging and the different artistic areas?
LP: For what we call “setting” my attempt has been to turn the Casacuberta hall into a place of “magic”. But, I repeat, the driving force is to be able to find in the Spanish of the magnificent actors of La Gran Ilusión the echo of the Neapolitan through which Eduardo de Filippo’s exquisitely popular poetry reaches us.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
