Náufragos

Who has never dreamt of dropping everything and clearing off to a desert island? Let him cast the first stone who has not pictured himself surrounded by coconut palms, fanned by some beautiful woman, or man, and rocked by the sweet purring of calm waters… Our capacity to dream, to invent paradises — tax havens included — and, in the end, to escape into a dream of prosperity, whether financial, sentimental or simply playful, has no limits.

Escape, utopia: beautiful words, seeds of dreams to which the passing years have given meanings that are — grandiose? The cliché takes shape and, as such, empties out; it fills with itself, which is to say with nothing, and is repeated from mouth to mouth, chewed over. Words shut in cages of ignorance, stripped bare, broken.

Imagine… calmly, just for a moment and with a fourth wall to protect you, that our longings come true. Imagine that the desert island, far from being a paradise, is only a desert island, with its mosquitoes, its storms, its lovely bright sand working its way into every one of our pores… Imagine our dreams turning into sea foam, four thousand kilometres from the nearest civilisation.

The cliché becomes flesh and the dream becomes real. That is what happens, which is not little, but not much either. By now it seems that none of it matters, and yet we go on dreaming; there must be a reason… A production written by Jorge Picó and directed by Andrés Beladiez

It is precisely that delicacy which characterises a piece as unusual as it is appealing, placid and welcoming.

Andrés Beladiez, as well as directing, has created a lighting design that is apt and gentle, one that suggests rather than imposes the shaded climates through which a group of young performers moves — performers in whom an excellent training, both as actors and physically, is plain to see.

— Pedro Manuel Víllora, in ABC, 31 January 2001

Credits

Author: Jorge Picó

Performers: César Maroto, Lidia Navarro, Antonio Pérez and Juan Antonio Lumbreras

Music: Borja Ramos

Set and costume design: Juan Manuel Álvarez

Direction and lighting design: Andrés Beladiez

Performed at the Teatro Galileo in Madrid.