the opponent – High Season festival
Direction: Julio Manrique. Interpretation: Pere Arquillué and Carles Martínez. Dramaturgy: Julio Manrique, Marc Artigau and Cristina Genevat, based on the novel by Emmanuel Carrère. Municipal Theater of Girona
Diu Emmanuel Carrere that if he had presented the opponent like a fictional novel, they would have thrown him on the floor for the low likelihood. And he’s right. It approaches a crime that is both real and hard to believe: the one perpetrated by Jean-Claude Romand against his entire family for keeping a lie alive. For seven years, the writer attended the trial, studied the summary and corresponded with the murderer trying to find the reason for his actions: murdering his wife, children, parents and even the dog to prevent him from found out that he was not a doctor and did not work for the World Health Organization, a farce that had lasted eighteen years.
Carrère didn’t find answers, but a book came out of that obsession, now turned into a theatrical show that, directed by Julio Manrique, opened Temporada Alta on Friday.
Manrique himself, Marc Artigau and Cristina Genebat have articulated a dramaturgy that works because it respects the original without trying to imitate it. With the movements of a simple sofa, the piece is the backbone of a fragmented story that is conceived as a subtle waltz between two characters: the murderer and the novelistwhich in turn unfolds to give a voice to the victims or to raise hypotheses where he does not know for sure what happened.
One is Carles Martínez, capable of conveying all the horror that hides a normal man and being that neighbor who always said hello, but who, deception after deception, can become a monster.
The other, Pere Arquillué, is the literary voice that expands in a wide range of secondary, in some cases, cartoonish, to the point of generating laughter that does not agree with the restlessness generated by this whole story.
Because the face-to-face is, of course, a fantastic game of mirrors, a lure for the audience to pick up the gauntlet and look for what is Romand inside each one: not the killer, but the impostor unable to draw a line between what we are and what we pretend to be.