Jordi Prat i Coll is on the crest of the wave. If last summer the Grec Festival closed with a madness around Eva Perón, now the last production of the season premieres at the TNC with another hyperbolic work based on Els criminals by Ferdinand Bruckner. And if it is hyperbolic with thirteen performers on stage, led by Joan Carreras, Maria Rodríguez Soto, Lluís Soler and Cristina Plazas, it still falls short of the fifty that appear in the original work of the German-speaking author.
But what Prat i Coll has done based on Kàtia Pago’s translation goes far beyond an adaptation, because he has replaced the third act with dialogues from a later work by the same author, The Races. For this purpose, the director of the TNC, Carme Portaceli, has given him carte blanche. “I thought that, if one day my name was Carme – declares the adapter and director –, something that he did not think would happen, I had to look for a work that would be a winning horse. He was looking for something German from between the wars and couldn’t find it, and Enric Gallén told me to read Els criminals. And that was it, because it speaks of justice.”
The work is set in the Weimar Republic: “We are in a time of freedom and the work shows that saying law, saying democracy or saying justice does not mean that all of that works. Article 175 imprisoned men who had sex with other men or animals. And in the work, with many resources but without talking about it directly, all that resonates. It is intelligent theater, which does not give everything to the viewer in advance.”
“Bruckner promotes a theatrical movement called new objectivity to bring what happens on the street to the theater,” he continues. And in this work what is invented is a type of 13 Rue del Percebe, where, in compartmentalized spaces, many things happen simultaneously, with an act of criminality in each cubicle and with a judge in each space. “We, although we have a great cast, have reduced it to a single judge who can do everything.”
Regarding that third act that he has transformed, he states: “The third act is minor. Bruckner has a later work, The Races, where he talks about her lineage, the Jew, who cannot teach at the university. From here we set up a cabaret, with the characters from Els criminals and the dialogues from Las Razas.
Prat i Coll has also written the lyrics of a song: “I am very happy because I have written my first cabaret song. It will be a hit, Avui en dia, composed by Dani Espasa. “Let Bad Gyal tremble!” he jokes. And he points out: “Don’t tremble, in any case make a version.” The director wants to highlight the work of Montse Colomer and Dani Espasa, as “two cornerstones of the montage.”
“Els criminals is not a comedy, but the audience will laugh. I think it is a terrible work. We can have a good time watching it, since it is one of the functions that the theater has, but what it says is terrible,” he concludes.
