The deserted island
Author and direction: Marc Artigau
Performers: Maria Rodríguez, Miki Esparbé
Place and date: La Villarroel (6/VI/2023)
If we were only left with a fragment of the “boy meets girl” story of L’illa deserta, with all the random accidents necessary and updated to increase the price of the expected happy ending, it could be deduced that Marc Artigau has decided to recover comedy romantic of the nineties of the last century, the reign of Nora Ephron. Even that in command of the time machine he went back to Leo McCarey and sought to recover that bitter point of the appointment of Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant at the Empire State Building. But Artigau is a placid iconoclast. An author who explores the resistance to conventions from a distance that confers a serene observation of humanity, and characters who are happily aware that they are.
Thus, while the public is seduced by all the elements typical of the genre, smiles, empathizes and surrenders to positive sensations, the playwright begins to deconstruct the code and replace it with a basic message more typical of the Stoics, almost anti-romantic. As if with a goldsmith’s hammer he would shatter the pink crystals. Thanks to the game of alternate realities, he quietly destroys the romantic ideal of his better half. As much as the perfect love is pursued, we will always find ourselves with the relentless current of life, its ups and downs and routines. The inevitable course of normality.
For Artigau, that revelation is not tragic. He proposes that we accept it after passing a brief duel and continue. Attitude summed up in the culminating scene of the casual encounter in some shopping arcades, a baby carriage and an adult dinosaur costume. Miki Esparbé, battling with wet sadness in front of the spectators against the revelation that the author gives him. With what finesse he introduces the beginning of the pathos of resignation into his dramatic equation! And how the interpreters respond!
Great decision to entrust Esparbé and Maria Rodríguez the leading couple and their variables. It is undeniable that part of the success of this function is due to the excellent chemistry that the two give off. Like its classic predecessors. Rodríguez, with eyes shining with gluttony, with aspirational emotions and then fading away, like the physiology of the aging body and the memories that fade away.
Once the cliché of romantic love has been broken, the dramatic atmosphere quite charged with a tender surrender and the acting performance of the two performers has been demonstrated, Artigau allows himself one last turn so that the public leaves the room more relieved than saddened. He reminds us that this is not life and you always have to give happy endings a new chance.
