"Me as Juliet?"
Ana Belén was stunned by the proposal that José Luis Gómez was making her.
"From Juliet?
And you of Romeo?
She incredulous at what she was hearing, the amazement of the actress grew.
Gómez finished explaining himself: "It's a story in which Romeo and Juliet wake up 50 years after his death."
Ana Belén breathed somewhat relieved.
At 72, she couldn't see herself playing a 13-year-old Juliet, and she couldn't imagine her colleague José Luis Gómez, at 82, as a handsome 14-year-old Romeo either.
Once the first moments of uncertainty have been overcome and although the actress still has to face faces of disbelief when she explains to friends and acquaintances that she is going to be the enamored Juliet brought to life by Shakespeare in the 14th century, this unusual game is now ready. and on track.
This new
Romeo and Juliet
, a magical mix of music, text and laughter, a hymn to old age and infinite love, a reflection on Alzheimer's and death, premiered on March 3 at the Calderón Theater in Valladolid, from where will begin a tour of different towns, ending at the Spanish Theater in Madrid, from April 15 to June 4.
Written by the Austrian EL Petschinka and staged by Rafael Sánchez, a Swiss-German conductor of Spanish descent, the show features the participation of David San José, who also writes the music, José Luis Torrijos and the cellist Irene Rouco.
The last week in Spanish, Gómez will be replaced by the actor Jesús Noguero.
Shakespeare wrote that Romeo and Juliet died embracing in the Verona mausoleum, after taking a poisonous potion.
But Ana Belén and José Luis Gómez, contradicting the playwright, dare to tell another story of "that couple of lovers with a bad star."
This
Romeo and Juliet
begins where Shakespeare's story ends.
After the last kiss, and after lying down in their granite beds to wait for death, they wake up 50 years later, dressed in their beautiful and elegant clothes.
She believes that only three days have passed, she still looks like that 13-year-old girl and happily remembers her beloved Romeo of hers.
He doesn't remember anything, neither who he is nor what his name is.
"Where am I?" he wonders.
She only sees an old man, he an attractive mature woman.
And so begins a different and surprising story of the world's most famous lovers.
Ana Belén, in another scene from 'Romeo and Juliet'. Javier Naval
The project comes from afar.
José Luis Gómez, the warper of this function, explains it in an appointment with this newspaper together with Ana Belén, held in Valladolid after the first rehearsal of the work in this city.
“Ana Belén and I were lucky enough to play Ofelia and Hamlet in a performance directed by José Carlos Plaza in 1986. That meeting on stage was revealing due to the contact with this exceptional actress.
I wanted to repeat it and this, together with the news that the Royal Shakespeare Company had devised a performance of
Romeo and Juliet
with older actors, but without altering the original text, made me decide to put this story on its feet", says the actor, playwright, academic and founder of the Teatro de la Abadía in Madrid, a center he directed until four years ago.
Ana Belén listens to him with a smile and nods when she remembers that work that brought them together.
“I am happy that José Luis thought of me.
Taking up this story from old age, which transcends tragedy to become a game, is exciting.
And more to do it from now on, to ask ourselves what happens to the love of some young people that leads them to death, who meet again, but do not recognize each other.
That recognition of old age is what makes this reading an interesting version", says the actress, convinced that this work, in which she plays with the original text, will even interest all those young people who dare to enter through the door of a theater
The text of this
Romeo and Juliet
arose from the talks, discussions and meetings that the two performers have held for many days together with the author Petschinka and the director Rafael Sánchez, collaborators for years in the European theater, and who dared in 2018 to adapt for the Abbey the key work of Spanish narrative
Tiempo de silencio
by Martin Santos.
Many of the things experienced by the two interpreters are breathed in this work, according to their own admission.
“Where do we get the seed?
From ourselves.
We both have experience of love at an advanced age and I think that in our case that love is extraordinary”, says Gómez, who says she is now living “a love like never before”, a love that will soon end in a wedding.
Ana Belén points out that imagination also plays a key role in this work, in "this fun game with such a sense of humor about what love is like between older people."
“Within us are all the emotions, what you have to know is the button that you have to press in each of the moments, but what is clear is the importance of loving, knowing how to love, being loved, continuing to love or having loved some “, says the actress,
José Luis Gómez, in his role as Romeo. Javier Naval
Memory and memories, or rather, their loss, beat firmly in
Romeo and Juliet
—which includes a very tender scene of two old men suffering from senile decrepitude in a residence—, many of them also brought from lived experience, like the one that José Luis Gómez confesses, in a muffled voice, when recounting the recent death of his brother, “my idol in adolescence”, after years of suffering from Alzheimer's.
“We are facing a wonderful hymn to old age, to life until the last moment, to the vindication of the elderly who now have it difficult”, Ana Belén points out to end: “If capitalism were a little more intelligent, it would realize that when people reach a certain age they have a better chance of enjoying themselves if they make it easier for them”.
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