Emmanuel Carrère’s fascination with the case of the lying murderer Jean-Claude Romand, twenty years deceiving everyone and killing the whole family when he is about to be discovered, led him to write The Adversary, which has now become a play theater directed by Julio Manrique, who has adapted it with Cristina Genebat and Marc Artigau.
Premiered in autumn at the Girona festival Temporada Alta, L’adversari is performed at the Romea theater until next Sunday, with two actors who are above good and evil. Carles Martínez is Romand, and Pere Arquillué gives him the replica as Carrère and twenty other characters.
Martínez explains his experience of stepping into the shoes of this “poor devil”: “It’s a very delicate thing, because he looks like a normal man, but everything that happens happens; it’s quite a journey. I have built him based on not seeing him as a monster, but as a fairly normal person. But these things can happen in our closest reality”.
Regarding his characters, Arquillué says: “I have come closer to Carrère’s position, in addition to playing these twenty roles, which is a very interesting dramaturgical game”. The actor also celebrates the dramaturgy that has been made of it: “When there is an adaptation, it is usually said that the book is better, but in this case I think that, from what the public tells us, which is very involved, we arrive beyond”.
“By playing all the roles of the auca, I question the viewer more and he plays with me more, raising this reason that he is looking for Carrère in the book, but he cannot find him. There are people who come away impressed because they have come to feel empathy for the character, even though it is as deserted as a farmhouse.”
After Josep Maria Miró’s The most beautiful body that will ever be found in this place, it seems as if Arquillué has specialized in playing various characters: “Also in Paraíso perdido he played a god who had many faces, like narrator, as an author… It was a coincidence, but I had a great time playing various characters and breaking the fourth wall to get closer to the audience”.
Regarding the character of Romand, Martínez thinks that “we will never finish him”. “It is a mystery, an enigma. At the outset, you can never imagine that something like this, which starts with not appearing for an exam at the university, can end after twenty years in this tragedy. The initial development is almost vaudeville”.
“Because incomprehensible – Arquillué interjects – because you don’t give credit. There is a moment when he says: if I had taken this argument to a publisher, I would not have bought it because I would have considered it incredible. We never get to know each other”, he concludes.
