MIAMI.- From Montevideo, Uruguay, actors Estefana Acosta and Lucio Hernández traveled to Miami to represent their country in the 38th edition of the Miami International Hispanic Theatre Festivalwhich organizes Teatro Avante.
The proposal, Barrabs, the story of a dogwritten and directed by Stefanie Neukirch, tells, according to the synopsis released, the story of a two-year-old boy who is attacked by his dog. It is indicated that the mother witnesses the attack, the father does not. Father and mother will take turns blaming each other in the failed attempt to find an explanation for the immeasurable. But the constructions It is much more, and also much less, than what the viewer confronts in scene.
Without a doubt, this is a complex text, which explores guilt, insecurity and the search for a truth, which does not have to be the real truth. During the woman’s meeting with her husband, connections to religions are introduced to try to explain situations and possible realities. Towards the end, the play makes a 180-degree turn and it is there where conceptually, this observer finds some deficiencies that take away credibility from the piece, although theatrically they are very well conceived.
As the play progresses, it becomes clear that Barrabs is the Pitbull that the family acquired at a pet shelter and that the animal has a bloody past. From the beginning, everything is shocking, as Muriel, the woman, a character played with confidence and expressive force by Estefana Acosta, is completely covered in blood, as is the floor of the house. She drinks a drink while talking on the phone with her mother and the doctor who is treating her son.
From the first minutes it is clear that her son Gaby is undergoing emergency surgery in a hospital for dog bites, and that the poor child has lost an arm. There is no doubt about what has happened, because the mother expresses it and the public hears her and, in addition, they see blood everywhere, and I repeat, also on Muriel’s clothes.
The arrival of the father, Thomas, a writer and lecturer who has travelled urgently from Jerusalem, where he was staying, leads to an intense encounter with his wife, seeking an explanation for what happened. While they talk about the events, the woman continues drinking, and it is revealed that he is a lover and that Barrabas had been a fighting dog for a certain Lascas.
Lucio Hernandez as Thomas, assumes his character with calm and control. He defends the actions of his pet, and since it is presumed dead, he suggests burying it before going to see his son at the sanatorium, and even evokes the Via Dolorosa he walked along hours before rushing to Montevideo (all this occurs while the couple’s son is in the operating room of a hospital).
The story has other points through which it moves, until in the final minutes the man goes out to the patio of the house to see the dead animal and finds it alive and without a scratch. This twist is even more disconcerting and leaves many doors and doubts open, such as the torrent of sand that falls from the top of the stage on two occasions, at the beginning and at the end of the play, undoubtedly as a symbol of something, the meaning of which is not clear to this attendee (it was a nice theatrical effect, though).
Theatre is magic and creation, but any thematic and scenic complexity must be sustained, like the sand, like the blood in the woman’s body, like the fact that the owner of the dog returns home after days, and the dog does not start barking with joy, as dogs usually do. Everything is left open, suggesting that Muriel stabbed her son (which would be another play). In short, as open as the doors of the Westchester Cultural Center at the end of the performance. Each person went his own way, perhaps convinced that it was not exactly the story of a dog, as the title of the confusing piece indicates.
