When Ernst Lubitsch premiered his hilarious film
to be or not to be in 1942
, starring the actors of a Warsaw theater company who use their acting skills to outwit the Nazis after the invasion of Poland, much of the critics and many viewers criticized it furiously and described the director as insensitive for daring to joke about Hitler and the concentration camps in the middle of World War II.
But time puts everything in its place and over the years the film was recognized as one of the best satires of Nazism in cinema and an example that humor is also a valid genre in times of tragedy.
The playwright Alfredo Sanzol, director of the National Dramatic Center, is now launching a similar ordeal with his new work: a comedy about the war in Ukraine in the middle of the war in Ukraine.
It contains hilarious scenes in which Putin himself comes out in striped pajamas or jokingly saying things like "the entire planet has seen me shirtless" and, furthermore, it opens at the Valle Inclán theater in Madrid this Friday, just the day that One year has passed since the Russian offensive began―, led by the author himself.
Aren't you afraid of reproaches like those that were thrown at Lubitsch at the time?
Why has he gotten into this puddle?
“Because humor is the best tool I know against violence and fantasy is essential to be able to escape and at the same time understand reality”, Sanzol responds emphatically during a break from rehearsals.
just the day that marks one year since the Russian offensive began―, directed by the author himself.
Aren't you afraid of reproaches like those that were thrown at Lubitsch at the time?
Why has he gotten into this puddle?
“Because humor is the best tool I know against violence and fantasy is essential to be able to escape and at the same time understand reality”, Sanzol responds emphatically during a break from rehearsals.
just the day that marks one year since the Russian offensive began―, directed by the author himself.
Aren't you afraid of reproaches like those that were thrown at Lubitsch at the time?
Why has he gotten into this puddle?
“Because humor is the best tool I know against violence and fantasy is essential to be able to escape and at the same time understand reality”, Sanzol responds emphatically during a break from rehearsals.
More information
When the theater became a refuge in kyiv
Hence the title:
Fundamentally Fantasies for Resistance
.
The plot unfolds on two levels.
On the one hand, there are the conversations of the members of a Kiev theater company who use their rehearsal room as a bomb shelter and who decide to put on a new play to keep themselves busy and united during the war.
In the background, viewers watch the creation process of this work and thus learn about the plot: it is titled
Pin, Pan, Putin
and follows the adventures of a Spanish baroque music group that is invited to perform in the Kremlin and takes advantage of the occasion to try to kill Putin.
And then the comedy breaks out: agents from the National Intelligence Center, from the CIA, a Russian guru, a Greek goddess with wings and a musician from Pamplona who is nailed to Putin and in turn to the Ukrainian who plays them both in Kiev.
These last three (the fake Putin and the two doubles of him) are embodied in a triple pirouette by Juan Antonio Lumbreras, accompanied by nine other actors who dart in and out from one character to another as in the best sitcoms.
There is a lot of Lubitsch, but also other classics such as Chaplin's
The Great Dictator
(also released during World War II) or the
Red Telephone
,
we flew to Moscow
from
Kubrick.
And even from Gila's surreal dialogues with "the enemy".
Juan Antonio Lumbreras and Paco Déniz, in another scene from 'Fundamentally fantasies for resistance', by Alfredo Sanzol.luz soria (NATIONAL DRAMA CENTER)
Many moments will provoke great laughter among the public, but laughter is not intended as a frivolous antidote to forget about the war for a while, but rather the opposite: it is rather a way of facing it.
That is why tragedy is here constantly intertwined with comedy.
Sirens, missiles and anguish over what continues to happen outside the rehearsal room, which thus becomes a doubly protective space: it is a physical and psychological refuge.
“This is above all a work about the power of fiction as a tool to resist reality and understand it”, insists Sanzol.
The author recalls that the text was born precisely from the need to respond to the shock caused by the outbreak of a new war in Europe and assimilate its consequences.
The definitive inspiration came to him when he read a report in EL PAÍS about the ProEnglish Theater company in kyiv, which despite the bombs maintains activity in its theater, which has also been converted into an air raid shelter.
“Now more than ever we need to laugh to sustain ourselves.
We have a responsibility to use our art to create a foundation to support the gloom that floods us.
That grief can rest its immense weight on the infinite joy of creating”, says a character from
Fundamentally fantasies for resistance
.
Something that was corroborated precisely by the two directors of ProEnglish Theatre, Anabell Sotelo and Oleksandr Borovenskiy, in a debate open to the public organized by the National Drama Center last January in Madrid.
“If I ever had doubts about the relevance of my work or about whether I was getting into where I was not called to, they took them away from me when they read it and gave me their blessing,” says Sanzol.
The author underlines another important issue that runs through the work: the value of each life.
Even if it's a fictional life.
It is unleashed when two characters argue about the origin of assassinating Putin in his comedy.
"He is not a person, he is a character," says one.
"A character represents a person," qualifies another.
"That's what the theater is for.
To charge people with lies and not in reality ”, replies the first.
“And the image that is projected to reality?
The frivolity with which you play with the life of a person? ”, rebuts the second.
Recalling the important role that fictions play in people's lives, Sanzol explains: “They shape our behavior and our vision of reality.
For example: if in the movies even the heroes kill anonymous people indiscriminately,
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