Since Parking Shakespeare was founded in 2009, the Catalan company has not missed its summer event. Now it is back, in the park of Estació del Nord, with Ricard III, a tragedy, because they say that they have already made many comedies. But from the assignment given 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 commissions me to direct their July play – explains Torres -, they put a series of conditions when choosing it. Shakespeare wrote a lot of them, but it couldn’t be any they’ve already done, and they’ve done a few; it’s better if it’s a tragedy, they tell me, because they’ve already made a lot of comedies; and that it connects with some element of current affairs”.
Richard III was a lame tyrant, ill-mannered, but with an impressive bad drool. And this is where Torres found the tear-jerker: “I thought of Richard III and his physical limitations, and that made me look for information about the tyrants’ childhoods. There are many who have had problems as children, like Hitler, or like Franco with that raspy voice”.
“Social pressure starts very early, it starts in schools – continues the director. And then I imagined that all of the Parking Shakespeare, who are already grenadiers, were in uniform as a high school musical. They are students who bully the madman, in this case the future King Ricard. The goal that I set for myself and that I think we have achieved is that when he dies the public feels sorry for him”.
The company becomes a group of “wacky characters, who sing and dance, to seek the acceptance of non-normative beauty”. For this, he has created a new character, a kind of jester or rodamon, who is played by Marco Sanfilippo and who speaks half Italian. “The jester, who is not in the original work, is the one who helps me understand this,” confesses Torres. He advises Ricard on what to do so that he won’t be bullied, and although it seems that he will succeed, Ricard eventually rebels and becomes the tyrant we all know.
“But I had to give up many characters and subplots to leave it in 90 minutes”. And this Richard III is no longer a tragedy. Knowing the trajectory of Carla Torres, it could not be otherwise: “I have perverted the 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 had the advice of Laura Bonsai”, half of Las Ninyas del Corro. “And for the final battle, bearing in mind that there are ten actors, I made a distillation of it.”
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 achieved “a loyal audience every July”.
“My kingdom for a horse!” cries the tyrant when he sees himself at the gates of death. And he will say it here too, in the middle of the spiral of the Estación del Nord park, under the trees, from July 7 to 30, with free entry. It is advisable to get there early, to take good positions in the seats in the center of the spiral, where the roar of the park and the scoundrel playing there is more muted.
