It is not usual in theater to make a second part of a function, but following the success of Escape room, which even had a film version, Joel Joan and Hèctor Claramunt have “gone crazy” and have accepted the challenge to premiere Escape room 2, from December 5 at the Condal theater in Barcelona.
“Putting a 2 behind a title weighs a lot – explains Joan-. Héctor and I have been thinking about this story for two and a half years, and bringing it to the stage has been a huge challenge because you have to continue to surprise. You have to make the second part, despite the fact that it also takes place in an escape room and the same characters, as surprising as the first.”
In this second installment, five years have passed for both the characters and the audience, since the play was released in 2018. “The premise is that they got out of that first escape room alive, but today their circumstances have changed, in terms of relationships, social status, love and heartbreak… But the bet cannot be the same, we must double or triple it, we must set the bar higher”.
The formula, however, is the same: “So that there is a dramatic silence and we can laugh, we have to joke again about the small things of humanity, the miseries of the characters, their contradictions, what they would like to be and than they actually are”. Joan goes further and formulates a vital reflection: “Over the years, we assume many things, but new fears appear. Friends you thought would be forever suddenly cease to be when something breaks. Successes and failures shape you… And that’s very interesting.”
Just as in the first part the historical-political moment following 1-O appeared, now also: “The rabid actuality of our socio-political environment is present. The first work took place in the post-referendum period and now the expectations and conflicts are very different.”
The first part ended with the appearance of Nazism, which, despite some criticism of trivialization, Joel defends that it was just the opposite: “It was a warning, a wake-up call, because the monster is getting bigger and bigger. Our individual resignations demonstrate the fear we have and this is the great weapon of the extreme right to grow”. Now, however, the tearjerker cannot be revealed, “but it is clear that there is no bigger monster than Hitler, the universal demon”, remarks the co-author, who plays this piece with Paula Vives, Borja Espinosa, Agnès Busquets and Irene screw up
The direction is from the other author, Hèctor Claramunt, “because the editing is very complex, with many open fronts, and that’s how we divide the work. We interact constantly, because we are both producers with Focus, but each one concentrates on his part. Is there anything smarter than dividing the work?”, he concludes.
