“Acting is the axis of my life, turning around for things to come out, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.” This is how Núria Espert defines herself, who at the age of 87 premieres La isla del Aire at the Romea theatre.
In this scenario, the veteran actress offered García Lorca’s Gypsy Ballads in 2020, but now she returns to the theater that saw her born as an actress with a risky bet: “With great texts you are protected, but with an unreleased author you do not are. If she had been a contemporary of Lorca and had offered me El público, I would have been horrified and would not have known how to see it. Giving life to a new text is very difficult”.
When Sagarra discovered her in an office at this same theater, where she appeared to interpret a children’s story, the playwright told her that she had “balls like a bull”. That is why Espert is not intimidated and enthusiastically accepts the challenge of starring in the theatrical version of La isla del Aire, based on the novel by Alejandro Palomas: “The opportunity to work with a text that I did not know, that I have not chosen but now it’s mine. The author has discovered that it could be condensed into an hour and a half of theater. Memories have been fixed in this piece, which is like a Nordic saga”.
Mencía, the matriarch played by Espert, is accompanied by two daughters and two granddaughters, the actresses Vicky Peña, Teresa Vallicrosa, Miranda Gas and Candela Serrat, directed by Mario Gas. The Isla del Aire is an islet in Menorca where there is a lighthouse and where the matriarch takes the women of her family so that together they can try to overcome the disappearance of Elena, another of her granddaughters.
“The text of Palomas is a mixture of a novel and a theatrical text,” explains the director, who defines La isla del Aire as “a theatrical symphonic poem full of pain and hope.” Peña qualifies it: “I don’t know if it’s symphonic, but it does have chamber music for five instruments”.
Gas summarizes the work: “We witness the vicissitudes of five women from three generations. Mencía takes them to the island lighthouse to meet again and get forward together, and she manages to remove the stopper. It is a dark and at the same time luminous work”. “But in the play there is humor –Espert points out–, good-natured humor, which helps us to bear it, as happens in Greek tragedies”.
The director affirms that with Palomas, who has attended some rehearsals, they are “in the same tune”. “It is a work that is not schematic, and I have tried to give it continuity, not a succession of prints. I want to highlight my courage to lock myself away with five women, an experience that is also a gift. I like working with the actors and actresses not so that they do what I want, but rather that what the interpreter and I are looking for comes out”.
Josep Maria Pou, director of the Romea Theatre, confesses that this Focus production was already on the table in 2008: “But we needed a director who did well for the play and a cornerstone, an actress who was available for the role of the mother”. The performances of La isla del Aire begin tomorrow and “we have the feeling that it is one of the great premieres of Romea”, concludes Pou.
