Lo cant de les ànimes mudes at Teatre Gaudí, Barcelona Review
Written by Laura for Theatre & Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
Lo cant de les ànimes mudes tells the story of two Catalan rural households, both alike in dignity, that share a feud about their lands. A secret love sparks between the pubilla (heiress) and the hereu (heir), who both feel pressured to let the other go due to their families’ history and circumstances.
The show is born from uniting two different texts by Víctor Català (Caterina Albert): the tale Ànimes mudes (Silent Souls) from 1904, and the poetry book Lo cant dels Mesos (the Song of the Months) from 1901. Adapted by Jordi Vilà Zapata, the tale forms the dialogue, and the poems were adapted into songs by Ismael Dueñas. The songs, which are about each of the months of the year, represent the passing of time throughout our main characters’ lives, from dawn to dusk. It is a beautiful metaphor that ties in with the story with its rural imagery, also present in the short tale.
Teatre Gaudí has a central stage flanked by seats on all sides. In this case, a white curtain blocked one of the sides, so only three were available. In the center, baskets, clothes and boxes occupied the stage. I was seated on one of the sides and felt that the staging had been well adapted to Gaudí’s unusual seat configuration, never feeling as if the sides were an afterthought. However, I do wish they would have taken the extra step of making full use of the four corners of the stage; I believe that would have given it an interesting twist. That said, I understand the play was not designed with this theatre in mind, and factors like time constraints or even backstage access might have played a big part in this decision.
The songs were beautiful, sung by an incredibly talented cast: Queralt Sánchez, Arnau Fà, Alba Serrano, Lu Martín, David Bonilla and Paula Amell. I loved the blend of everyone’s voices, especially Serrano and Martín’s, and there were some complex harmonies at play that sounded truly heavenly. Everyone switched characters, roles, and even singing styles with complete ease. The cast was my absolute favorite thing about this show. I did find that the piano was a bit too loud and sometimes I missed parts of the lyrics or the dialogue because of it, which is a tad unfortunate since the language used is a bit outdated and already harder to catch than usual. The choreography was energetic and tied in with the story very well, such as when the characters are working on the fields or dancing amongst themselves.
I’ve had a look at the original story, as well as the poems, and found the text to be the same as the one in the play, word by word, as far as I can tell. That gives the play a beautifully curated language, bringing back and reconnecting with an extremely rich vocabulary and lexicon. However, the original story is only about six pages long, which makes it feel a bit lacking in depth. During the show, I felt as if the story was more like a common thread tying the songs together, rather than a complete narrative that could be told independently of them. Changing original works is always a scary prospect but I do feel like it would have benefited from a bit of extra dialogue and plot. Still, I greatly enjoyed this Catalan Romeo and Juliet!
Lo cant de les ànimes mudes is a solid proposal by an incredibly talented group of artists that seeks to bring back the beauty of Catalan literature, as well as its vibrant language.
The musical will be playing at Teatre Gaudí until June 22nd.
★★★★
