Since Parking Shakespeare was founded in 2009, the Catalan company has not missed its summer appointment. Now he returns, in the Estació del Nord park, with Ricard III, a tragedy, because they assure that they have already done many comedies. But from the commission that was made to Carla Torres, the adapter and director has ended up doing what she wanted with one of Shakespeare’s most tyrannical works.
“When Parking Shakespeare commissioned me to direct his July play –explains Torres–, they set a series of conditions. Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays, but there couldn’t be any that they had already done, and there have been quite a few; It better be a tragedy, they tell me, because they have already done many comedies; and that connects with some element of today”.
Richard III was a lame, shabby tyrant, but with an impressive bad shadow. And this is where Torres found the solution: “I thought of Ricardo III and his physical limitations, and that led me to look for information about the childhood of tyrants. There are many who have had problems as children, like Hitler, or like Franco with that whistle voice”.
“Social pressure starts very early, it starts in the schools –continues the director–. And then I imagined that all of the Parking Shakespeares, who are already mature, would be in uniform like in High school musical. They are students who bully the one who is lame, in this case the future King Ricardo. The objective that I set myself and that I think we have achieved is that when he dies, the public will feel sorry for him ”.
The company becomes a group of “messy characters, who sing and dance, to seek acceptance of non-normative beauty.” For this, he has created a new character, a kind of buffoon or globetrotter, played by Marco Sanfilippo and who speaks half Italian. “The buffoon, who is not in the original work, is the one who helps me understand that,” confesses Torres. He advises Ricardo what he has to do so that he doesn’t get bullied, and although he seems like he’ll get it, Ricardo finally rebels and becomes the tyrant we all know.
To reach the final result, Torres has written five versions of the original text, based on the translation by Joan Sellent. “However, I’ve had to give up a lot of characters and subplots to get it down to 90 minutes.” And this Ricard III is no longer a tragedy. Knowing the career of Carla Torres, it could not be otherwise: “I have perverted tragedy because I like to pervert everything.”
As an example, the playwright explains: “I wrote a poem and it ended up being a rap that we incorporated into the play. I have had the advice of Laüra Bonsai”, one half of Las Ninyas del Corro. “And for the final battle, considering that there are ten actors, I have made a distillation.”
José Pedro García Balada, who has taken over from Pep Garcia-Pascual in the artistic direction of Parking Shakespeare, is satisfied because after so many years they have managed to have “a loyal audience every July”.
“My kingdom for a horse!” Shouts the tyrant when he sees himself at the gates of death. And here he will say it too, in the middle of the spiral of the Estació del Nord park, under the trees, from July 7 to 30, with free admission. He is advised to arrive early to take good positions in the seats in the center of the spiral, where the noise of the park and the children playing is muffled.
Catalan version, here
