‘Prefiero que me quite el sueño Goya a que lo haga cualquier hijo de puta’ Rodrigo Garcia's new play
‘Prefiero que me quite el sueño Goya a que lo haga cualquier hijo de puta’: Rodrigo Garcia’s acerbic title sets the benchmark for this bizarre, scathing critique of consumerist society.
A master of comedy noir, the prodigious Argentine playwright has gained an international reputation – and a UNESCO prize – for his experimental, vitriolic works that expose the alienating and violent logic at the heart of capitalism. Eschewing narrative, his character-less plays have more in common with interactive art installations than naturalist theatre.
García’s radical style has not always been welcomed with open arms in Argentina – perhaps because his cynical, violent approach cuts a little close to the porteño bone. But with two more pieces lined up for the coming year (‘King Lear’ and the no-less-provocative ‘Agamemnon, I came home from the supermarket and beat my son’) it’s not likely to be long before ripple effects are detected on the avant-garde theatre scene.
Shock tactics abound in his latest work. As the audience files in they’re greeted by a prologue – “Principles for a cynical ethic” – and an ape frisbees books across the stage. Spewing diatribes at an extortionate rate, the ape soon divests himself to reveal a middle-aged, middle-class man (played by Emilio García Wehbi), on the brink of crisis.
Having decided to blow his savings in one extravagant escapade, he plans a trip to the Prado Museum in Madrid to witness at first hand Francisco de Goya’s infamous Black Paintings. To top this off, he plans on hiring the German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, the maverick of political-philosophical jokes, to decode their worldly view. His uncooperative teenager sons – whose voices are rendered in high-pitched squeaks – remain unimpressed and opt instead for a trip to Disney.
The set, populated by a stag, a television, a pile of intellectual tomes and a treadmill, is no less eccentric than the script. Jenny Holzer-inspired advertising slogans flicker like neon nightmares in the background, interspersed by the Chapman brother’s infamous defacements of Goya’s paintings.
The scenery might appear haphazard, but the play’s structure depends on a seamless building up of tension, aided by catchy tunes and video projections.
The main topics under discussion are generic and familiar – commodification, globalisation, binge drinking, the loss of ethical and symbolic values are fused in a series of iconic images.
At one point, having tarred himself in feathers and donned mickey mouse ears, García Wehbi’s character is incarnated into a disconcerting Goya-Disney living nightmare.
But if these bold, heavy-handed metaphors are effective, they do run the risk of alienating their audience. Rather than allowing for a steady buildup of meaning, the analogies are bombarded in a manner distinctly redolent of the advertising slogans they critique.
Take the Goya link. The Black Paintings are some of the most iconic, unflinching, deeply pessimistic portrayals of moral chaos. But the implied analogy with the despair of this alienated, vacuous modern stereotype, with all his irrational undercurrents, feels a little too abstract, too contrived.
The play is propped up, nonetheless, on the merit of García Wehbi, who manages to deliver a peachy performance while peddling a treadmill at breakneck speed. García’s script, for all its lofty theme, is also sharp and sustained throughout.
As a wry lament on the erosion of freedom and chronic dissatisfaction in modern society, the play is striking and subversive. But rather than inducing real anxiety or arousing an emotional response, it amounts to a clever, pointed, schematic debate.
