'Hellen Keller, Wonder Woman?', a captivating work about blindness, the left and faith

It had been a long time since I heard a stamp in a theater.

The one who said goodbye to the representation of

Helen Keller, Wonder Woman?

last Sunday, was fervent: the audience was captivated by the story and the performance of its performers.

Her protagonist, born in Alabama, was the first deafblind woman to obtain a university degree, in 1904. A year earlier she wrote her autobiography, translated into 50 languages.

Soon the media put her as an example for people with disabilities.

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This documentary by Chévere, a Compostela company that likes to put its finger on the issue, calls into question whether Helen Keller is an imitable example.

Born into a very well-connected family, her studies were financed by a financier of the monopolistic oil company Standard Oil, whom she met through Mark Twain.

Few people face disability in such favorable circumstances.

Part of the general public probably knows how the deafblind girl acquired the language thanks to

The Miracle of Anne Sullivan

,

a film by Arthur Penn in which Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke fight in a formidable hand-to-hand combat.

In

Helen Keller, Wonder Woman?,

directed by Xesús Ron, two of the actresses converse using the fingerprint system, a language that originated in Spain at the beginning of the 16th century, and the third translates what they say for us.

They also use Tadoma, another method that Ana Sullivan used in her fervent relationship with Helen.

For most of the listening public, approaching this universe is a surprise within a mystery.

The three co-stars use sign language: Ángela Ibáñez as a native;

Chusa Pérez de Vallejo, as her interpreter, and Patricia de Lorenzo, as a neophyte.

The last two sometimes narrate out loud what Ibáñez, a deaf actress, enunciates gesturally, but often you have to follow it with surtitles.

For deaf people it must be joyful to follow a show that delves into their world with such determined will, judging by the profuse silent applause with which they welcomed its conclusion.

The dialogues and soliloquies are also projected in sign language.

For deaf people it must be joyful to follow a show that enters their world with such determined will, judging by the profuse silent applause with which they welcomed its conclusion and by the way in which they stamped their feet on the stage: on other occasions that means rejection;

In this it was a way to convey his enthusiasm to locals and strangers.

The function follows the somewhat mechanical structure of a tutorial or a didactic notebook where the thesis that will be demonstrated at the end is presented, which I prefer not to reveal.

Its weak point is the excess of story.

De Lorenzo and Pérez de Vallejo (mother of the driving idea of ​​this work) are interpreters with presence, but Ibáñez is a whirlwind of precise gestures.

He moves muscles at will whose existence the rest of us are unaware of.

He was a prodigious

Richard III

a few months ago in this same Valle-Inclán theater.

If Marcel Marceau or Chaplin were revived, I could give them the answer: it is a shame that, because we are waiting for the surtitles, we cannot follow his performance at will.

His final argument against the intervention of the United States in World War I and his call to the workers to avoid taking that step seem like a response to the leaders who today call to prepare for a contest that suits almost no one.

This leftist, determined and lucid militant Helen lost her voice at the time, for obvious reasons.

It is overlooked in Chévere's montage that the protagonist's faith in the doctrine of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Protestant theosophist, largely explains the determination with which she always conducted herself, also politically.

Hellen Keller, Wonder Woman? 

Creation: Cool.

Text and direction: Xron.

Madrid: Teatro Valle-Inclán, until April 7.

Pontevedra, April 11.

Coruña, 12 and 13. Ames, 26. Barcelona: Teatro Lliure, from May 9 to 20.

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