It is not common in theater to mount a second part of a show, but following the success of Escape room, which even had a film version, Joel Joan and Hèctor Claramunt have gone “crazy” and have accepted the challenge of releasing Escape room 2, starting December 5 at the Condal theater in Barcelona.
“Putting a 2 behind a title weighs a lot,” explains Joan. Hèctor and I have been thinking about this story for two and a half years, and bringing it to the stage has been a huge challenge because we have to continue surprising. You have to ensure that the second part, although it also takes place in an escape room and is the same characters, surprises again like the first.”
In this second installment, five years have passed for both the characters and the audience, since the work premiered in 2018. “The premise is that they came out of that first escape room alive, but today their circumstances have changed compared to relationships, social status, loves and heartbreaks… But the bet cannot be the same, we have to double or triple it, we have to set the bar higher.”
The formula, however, is the same: “In order for it to have a dramatic impact and for us to laugh, we have to joke again about the little things of humanity, about the miseries of the characters, about their contradictions, about what they would like to be and than they really are.” Joan goes further and formulates a vital reflection: “Over the years, we assume many things, but new fears appear. The friends you thought would be forever suddenly stop being friends when something breaks. Successes and failures modulate you… And that is very interesting.”
Just as in the first part the historical-political moment as a result of 1-O appeared, now too: “The rabid current situation of our socio-political environment is present. The first work happened in the post-ferendum moment and now the expectations and conflicts are very different.”
The first part ended with the appearance of Nazism, which, despite some criticism of trivialization, Joel Joan defends was just the opposite: “It was a warning, a wake-up call, because the monster is getting bigger and bigger. Our individual resignations demonstrate the fear we have and this is the great weapon of the extreme right to grow.” Now, however, the solution cannot be revealed, “but it is evident that there is no monster greater than Hitler, the universal demon,” remarks the co-author, who performs this piece with Paula Vives, Borja Espinosa, Agnès Busquets and Irene Jódar. .
The direction is by the other author, Hèctor Claramunt, “because the assembly is very complex, with many open fronts, and that is how we divide the work. We interact constantly, because we are both producers with Focus, but each one concentrates on his part. Is there anything smarter than dividing up the work? ”He concludes.
Catalan version, here