As readers, viewers and travellers, we have learned that the center of life in any Irish town is the pub. As happens in the casino, in the center or in the café of many Catalan towns, everything is cooked in Irish pubs. This fascination with Irish plays that have been seen in Catalonia by playwrights such as Conor McPherson (The Good Thief, The Dam, A Bright City) and Martin McDonagh (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Skull of Connemara), has pushed Víctor Borràs Gasch to write his rural Catalan drama, Els ossos de l’irlandès, who confesses that he drinks from these Irish stories.
Borràs has worked a lot with family theater and since 2015 has promoted the La Casa del Teatre Nu project, a space for creation, exhibition and training, based in Sant Martí de Tous. But The Bones of the Irishman does not take place in this town of Anoi, but in any Catalan town, rural, in the interior, with a warehouse that functions as a meeting point that in the previously mentioned works the pub would do.
Directed by Xavier Ricart and starring Ivan Benet, Norbert Martínez and Ernest Villegas, this men’s drama won the Quim Masó 2022 award for the production, which is awarded by Temporada Alta. The director of the festival, Salvador Sunyer, regrets that this year is the one with the lowest allocation, 20,000 euros, because the TNC no longer participates, but next year it will be 40,000 euros again because the Greek Festival will be added.
The text has also been recognized with the 2022 Frederic Roda prize and is supported by the 2020 creation of the Sala Beckett. Els ossos de l’irlandès premieres on October 20 at the Teatre de Salt, and from November 15 to December 10 it will have a season at the Akademia theater in Barcelona.
Borràs confesses that he wanted to make a rural drama, “where the protagonists are not called Bill or Ian, but Llorenç or Xevi”. And indeed, the synopsis says that Llorenç has asked Héctor and Xevi to see each other for a moment. He hasn’t told them what he wants. But he says it’s important. And it must be, because today it’s raining a lot and I don’t feel like leaving the house. But you can’t wait precisely because today it’s raining like it hasn’t rained in years and, in the village, there are streams ready to unearth secrets that were believed to be forgotten.
Xavi Ricart defines the piece as “a rural black comedy”: “It reminds me a lot of Martin McDonagh, because of the repetitive dialogues, where the flaws shine more than the virtues. It is the work of men, with this way they have to relate, based on slander and insults”.
But there is more, he explains: “There is a secret from twenty years ago that reappears due to a weather issue, between three people between whom this anger and these misunderstood relationships are returning. And they will have to solve it, to see who they are and what they do with their lives”, declares the director.
Ernest Villegas brings iron to the drama because “trying to find the truth of these three characters, the comedy comes out”. And he defines what his character is like: “El Llorenç has a restaurant, he lives with his mother, and he doesn’t really know if they listen to him or not. He suffers a lot, he’s a bit obsessive, he’s not calm”.
Norbert Martínez also explains what Hector, the character he plays, is like: “He is one of the causes of everything that happens there, and it is difficult for him to rise to life”. And he adds: “The three men are not stereotypes, they are super complex characters”.
The third in disagreement, Ivan Benet, plays Xevi, who works at the cash register and makes craft beer in the ship where they are: “Víctor makes a comedy based on something very beastly that happened to them. It’s a scathing portrait of a generation born with the pressure cooker of the 1970s.” Benet also mentions the richness of language that Borràs has poured into it: “The semantic arc is much more complete than if it happened in Barcelona. The author has put words and expressions into it that give it a special dimension and, despite this, it is still contemporary theatre”, concludes the actor.