S Poddar
A bit more of a departure for its leading lady, but an acting role far away from the city lights of Paris is Lily Collins – fresh from Emily in Paris – as Bess Wohl’s latest effort makes its way on stage in the heart of Barcelona. In a sparkly jumpsuit, one shoe missing, she brings alive Irene, an American tourist, who had a very whirlwind encounter in the tapas bar with Manuel, a local, played by Álvaro Morte of Money Heist fame. Their chemistry is playful and light as they burst into his flat still laughing and sharing kisses with Irene even breaking her flow to look out of his window and get the Spanish pronunciation for one of its most iconic monuments. A while later they end on the kitchen counter in an playful hug: “Olé!”
It’s an airy, screwball farce, initially. As in Wohl’s other two-hander, Camp Siegfried, darker tides seep into the writing, though. Irene is both younger and more intoxicated than her partner; Manuel has home turf at least through Irene’s leaving to visit the little girls’ room. The cool and contemplative Manuel rolls up his sleeves and looks over at the audience as he sits on Irene’s left after she is gone. That suggests tension of greater depth than what initially meets the eye. In Lynette Linton’s production, however, suspense and humor don’t quite hit with consistency, so shifts between levity and tension don’t always work. Main plot revelations are flat and don’t have an emotional impact. Rather than making some moments clearer, they make others seem more implausible than they have to be. One would expect much more from a talented cast and creative team; yet, somehow, the play often feels drawn out, even in its 90-minute running time.
While Collins and Morte deliver amiable performances, the characters themselves fall flat for a more emotionally investing end, unlike with Linton’s recent dynamic staging of Shifters, which played at the Duke of York’s Theatre. Their conversations swing to flirtatious and on the point of heated disputes, as do their respective interactions with each other in response. Movement and intimacy direction Shelley Maxwell choreographs some odd moments of physicality, from Morte licking Collins’s feet to more serious debates over politics. Manuel lashes out at American exceptionalism, frustrated with Irene’s limited understanding of Spanish culture – so much so that she repeatedly mispronounces his name.
His anger extends to political issues, like the American invasion of Iraq, and the trauma he still carries from the 2004 Madrid train bombings. In a way, this is a haunted-house story of sorts, as the soon-to-be-demolished building represents an in-between place for both characters. The minimalist, bare-bones set by Frankie Bradshaw gives the sense that people are in limbo: capturing both the very-worn nature of this old building and the extremely transient connection between Irene and Manuel. When Irene rattles away, her claim to “pretend it’s the last night on Earth” resonates into the heart of the play of last chances and farewells. Wohl’s script layers in a series of endings, though some might argue there are perhaps too many, occasionally weighed down by explanations of the play’s symbolism—such as Manuel’s fondness for a particular aria from Gianni Schicchi or the unfinished masterpiece of the Sagrada Família.
At times, Irene’s reflections on “living life like a tourist” feel overstated when the point has already been well made. Wohl ambitiously tries to interweave personal histories with global political struggles, touching on personal and societal ways of trying to make sense of a chaotic world. The production, however, fails to find a consistent tone; the bittersweet elements of Wohl’s story do not fully come together. That does leave the whole experience a lot like something that easily could have been completed, had the production actually delivered on some completed scenes.
