The postwar period, especially the 1940s and 1950s, was very dark in Spain, “but there were outbreaks of life, like those that appear in the work of Almudena Grandes.” The person who affirms this is Carme Portaceli, director of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and also director of The Mother of Frankenstein, a theatrical adaptation of the novel of the same name by the Madrid writer, who died a year ago, and which is part of the series Episodes of a War. endless. Premiered last September at the National Dramatic Center, it now comes to the TNC, with Blanca Portillo and Pablo Derqui in the main roles.
In 1954, the young psychiatrist Germán Velázquez returned to Spain to work in the Ciempozuelos women’s asylum, in the south of Madrid. Here he meets again with Aurora Rodríguez, a paranoid, very intelligent parricide, who fascinated him when he was 13 years old, and he meets a nursing assistant, María Castejón.
“These are the strongest years of Franco’s regime,” explains the director, “when the State and the Church are more united and this ideology floats everywhere. Sister Belén, who works in the asylum, says: ‘If the ropes matter little, imagine the crazy ones. They are the last in all the lines. Vallejo-Nájera said that Germán Velázquez was one of the most famous professors of red Spain, although I do not like to use this term. He has studied abroad and has discovered a very important medicine for schizophrenia.”
Portaceli contrasts the vision of this boy who left very young, who when he returns discovers a country full of very strange things and attitudes. The relationship between the doctor and the patient is the crux of the story, and presents a series of very powerful scenes.
“When I directed the Spanish Theater,” Portaceli recalls, “I asked Almudena to moderate the post-performance discussions. She was extremely excited and got many people to attend even though they had seen the play on another day. Later I told him that I would like to bring one of his works to the stage and he didn’t answer me. I thought he wasn’t amused by my proposal, but then he wrote me a message telling me that he was very excited, but it also made him very dizzy.”
Each one proposed a work and finally Grandes was clear that it had to be the one she had just written, Frankenstein’s Mother. “I read it when I was still correcting it and I agreed that this had to be it,” says the director. Said and done, “Anna Maria Ricart Codina made the adaptation, based on Almudena’s and my underlinings,” but the premature death of the writer did not allow her to see the final result. “I think the adaptation is wonderful, that it closely follows her spirit: the Almudena of the losers, who doubted her because she never wanted to make a mistake.”
“Luis García Montero (who had been the writer’s partner) attended a rehearsal with his daughter and they left crying,” says Portaceli, who is convinced that Almudena Grandes would have liked this production.
