Respira

Last week we went to watch Respira at Teatro Britanico. It was a play written by Eduardo Adrianzén and directed by Roberto Ángeles. I was expecting it to be an incredible play, because I heard wonderful comments about it, but I got a little disappointed.

On the one hand, there were good things about Respira. The script was very well written. The story was narrated by a boy called Mario, in the present 40 years old. He talked about his family and their life in Lima on the 70s. His mother was religious and his father was a socialist atheist. ‘El conflicto de la obra es la dificultad de creer’ – Eduardo Adrianzén. This was exposed by, for example, the different ideas Mario's parents poured into his mind. He didn't know who to believe because the things his mother told him about religion was the oppposite of what his father told him.

These contradictions makes Mario create a different type of Jesus in his mind. Cristo, played by Renzo Shuller, was my favorite character and a total plus to the play. He was not the Jesus that we all know, but his a rebel, he likes fighting and talks about revenge. Roberto told me that he thought that Jesus was a little bit fat, but I thought that was the way he had to be, to add to the idea of contradiction. We all have the image of Jesus being a tall, skinny man, so watching a short fat guy playing a rebelious Jesus, to me it maked sense.

Oher thing that maked the play interesting, was the comedy. We are presented these too kids, Mario and Walter, in their first look to sexuality. The character of the priest was full of greed which adds to the contradiction of what people normaly expects, and what Mario experiences and imagines. Additionally, taking into account the scenery, I liked the idea of the rolling thingy on one corner of the stage and the images projected in the background wall, which changed the place the actions were happening.

On the other hand, there were things that, in my opinion, didn't work in this play. First of all, Mario was supposed to be the youngest child in his family. He had an older brother, Renato, yet Leonardo Torres Vilar (the actor playing Mario) had beard which made it imposible for audience, at least me, to believe that he was younger thatn his brother. Furthermore, I really did not understand the purposes of both Mario’s parents giving a speech of more than 5 minutes each, explaining their lives’ frustrations. I didn’t care about that. In my opinion it only made the play go slower. Overall, I didn’t love the play. It was not for a specific reason, I just didn’t enjoy it.

Roberto told me that he loved the script but the direction, thus the performance, was not as good. So I wonder, do we sometimes waste good scripts by giving not so good performances? What does it take to give a performance that is at the same level as the script? Can we give an excellent preformance with a bad text? How much of the quality of the performance rely on the script?