Ivan Viripaiev, Russian, from Siberia, staunch opponent of Vladimir Putin, so much so that he has renounced his nationality in favor of Polish citizenship. This is the biographical record of one of the values of the new dramaturgy of the country of his birth. He has found access to the Catalan scene at the door of the Biblioteca de Catalunya, and he does so with a work with a magnetic title, ‘Unes abraçades insuportablement llargues’. A text that caught the attention of Ferran Utzet, a director with close ties to La Perla29, at a dramaturgy festival in Nancy.
Utzet noticed an ambitious work, in form and content, who has carried the Gothic nave with the usual neatness and extreme care in his directions. It is not comparable, of course, but if La Perla de Oriol Broggi revealed Wajdi Mouawad to us, a major author of current dramaturgy, now he bets on another who he also navigates the waters of contemporary tragedy.
Four young people and two cities
It presents four young characters and a couple of scenarios, as referential for today’s youth as New York and Berlin. Three are Slavs (like the author) and one is from New York: Amy (Serbian), Monica (Polish), Krystof (Czech) and Charlie. Crossed lives, on the move, and without a fixed course when you are over thirty and you have to start taking firm steps in life. The piece dispatches a dose of nihilism –for that of the no future, sex, drugs and violence– and an existence that is not lived, rather suffered, or taken to the limit. Indeed, a textbook contemporary tragedy.
Viripaiev puts the most skeptical viewer to the test when he conducts his text, with a great translation by Miquel Cabal, towards an outcome not without risk. The meaning of that disorientated existence of the four young people seeks a way out in spirituality, and nothing earthly. And the playwright plays hard: inner voices, blue dots, project of the universe, cosmic spirituality, trip to hell, therapeutic dolphins, threatening snakes… An assorted catalog that can provoke the detachment of the public, something that Utzet’s staging and the involved work of his four performers counteract.
Guitars in the Library
The director settles with note a static proposal, almost built from monologues and practically without dialogues, but that takes the viewer by the hand. Viripaiev plays with the first and third person without the play creaking. The actors are not simple narrators, as it might seem, but they manage to transfer the tormented soul of their characters. Alba Pujol is Amy in a major acting job; Paula Malia sets the tone as Monica, the sweetest; Martí Salvat does it as the irascible Charlie, a guy who arouses antipathy, quite the opposite of Krystof, somewhat naive, in charge of a remarkable Joan Solé.
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‘Unes abraçades insuportablement llargues’ is not only text and situations, also atmosphere, which is taken care of by Jordi Busquets’ live electric guitar. It can be calm or furious, and the Gothic nave of the Biblioteca de Catalunya, a mutable stage like few others, lacked a few good guitar beats. You already have them. Ignasi Camprodon’s space, with a dazzling vanishing point, and Guillem Gelabert’s lights also help to create that sidereal spirituality in which Viripaiev glimpses salvation.
‘Unes abraçades insuportablement llargues’: lives on the edge in search of redemption