This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
Theatre: La Razon Blindada
Barbican Centre, London EC2
4 Stars
Presented by Ecuador's Teatro Malayerba as part of the CASA Latin American Theatre festival, the grim setting of La Razon Blindada is the Rawson prison in southern Argentina.
It was there in the 1970s that leftwingers arrested by the military junta were kept under a regime akin to a nazi concentration camp.
In one escape attempt 16 of those recaptured were forced at gunpoint to run for their lives again by their military guards and then shot in the back and killed.
Based on eyewitness accounts - one was by the brother of Malayerba's Argentinian writer and director Aristides Vargas, exiled by the military junta - La Razon Blindada (Bulletproof Reason) provides an episodic, fictionalised story of two prisoners.
A series of vignettes conjure prison realities, with the pair only allowed into the canteen on Sundays where they must remain seated in silence.
But, in a potent mix of Cervantes and Kafka, after the guards wander off they re-enact the story of Don Quixote de la Mancha and Sancho Panza.
While the narrative approach of Panza (Aristides Vargas) is measured, meticulous and orthodox de la Mancha (Gerson Guerra) launches into unexpected flights of fancy.
The exasperated Panza, forced out of the comfort zone, stretches his imagination with inspired and frequently hilarious results.
This bizarre, hidden world of therapeutic, survivalist make-believe is punctuated by sudden silence when de la Mancha warns of the approaching guards.
The set's two chairs and three tables, mounted on castors, are frequently propelled around by the two actors to shift emotional emphasis, culminating in the ecstatic circular ride of a joyous flight.
Such moments typify the brilliance of the performances. Guerra's slightly deranged de la Mancha is magnetic and his powers of mimicry astonishing, while the deadpan Varga is the perfect straight foil.
Quito-based, Teatro Malayerba seek to develop an "active and constructive criticism of the socio-political processes of our reality" with each play they produce. With La Razon Blindada they stay powerfully on message.
Michal Boncza
