After a few weeks of rest after filming the third season of the successful series “The one in charge” and his first month in “Cyrano” —always sold out— at the San Martín Theater, Gabriel “Puma” Goity is preparing to resume the functions of this Willy Landin production of the Edmond Rostand classic. Very popular for his television work in “Los Roldán” and “Poné a Francella”, Goity has been a fan of Cyrano de Bergerac since he was very young and says that this work is the excuse to tell his own story. So much so that in 2022 he went to offer himself to San Martín to play it, although they had already offered him to represent it in a commercial venue. “I wanted to do ‘Cyrano’ at the San Martín, with all the resources of this theater, where I also saw it for the first time performed by the great Ernesto Bianco and where I also did ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in the ’80s and ‘Twelfth Night’, by William Shakespeare,” he says.
News: You discovered “Cyrano” in 1977, when you were 16 years old and your maternal grandfather took you to see Bianco’s Cyrano. Tell me about his bond with that grandfather and what he felt when he saw this emblematic character.
Gabriel Goity: We lived in El Palomar, my parents work a lot and Grandpa Modesto, who had been widowed and had moved in with us, was in charge of taking me and my brothers on trips to the Center. We went to see “Cyrano” because I was bursting with laughter at a Bianco sketch with Alberto Olmedo on TV. When my grandfather told me that the play lasted four and a half hours, I doubted it, but that performance marked a before and after in my life. So much so that when we left the theater I told him: “I want to be Cyrano!”, I didn’t tell him “I want to be an actor.”. It is understood?
News: What relationship did your grandfather have with the theater?
Goity: He was a goldsmith, he had studied Fine Arts in Barcelona and here he had his own little workshop, where he did wonders for important houses like Ricciardi, so he had a great sensitivity for everything artistic. The first theater he took me to was the Colón, because he was the cousin of a renowned critic of that time who had a box, which we used when he wasn’t going; and I liked it—especially opera—but with “Cyrano” something else happened to me, I came out ecstatic.
News: Because?
Goity: For Cyrano’s idealism, his nobility, his vocation for service, for helping the weakest. Also because of his eternal love for the beautiful Roxane and because, like me, he has the Ugly Duckling complex.
News: Have you already experienced unrequited love?
Goity: Yes, I was very shy and I didn’t dare to do anything, but I was very in love with a neighbor of mine, very beautiful, who didn’t give me a lot of attention and ended up dating my best friend. He didn’t know that I liked her and when he told me about his story, he hit me very hard, but well, she chose him and I wished them the best. Which later also identified me with Cyrano.
News: When did your acting vocation emerge?
Goity: Two years later, in the least expected place: the archive of the army’s social work, where I started to work because my father was a soldier. There, my boss, Osvaldo, used to talk on the phone with a certain Jorge, from Gas del Estado, about acting, rehearsals… So one day I asked him if he was an actor, and when he answered yes and told me that he worked there as an actor, 7 to 14 to be able to dedicate himself to the performance in the afternoon, I told him that I had seen “Cyrano” and he surprised me by telling me that he had been one of the soldiers in that production. Look what a coincidence! The thing is that Osvaldo turned out to be Osvaldo Santoro and Jorge, Jorge Marrale. I owe it to both of them that I later enrolled in the National School of Dramatic Art. That’s how all this started.
News: In another interview he said that he would have liked this Cyrano to be darker. Did she say it by comparing him to the real Cyrano, the intellectual with libertine ideas who was even the lover of a French poet and musician? Was it considered in Landin’s adaptation to incorporate things from the real character?
Goity: No, we always work based on Rostand’s work, which talks about love. It happens that I love rather dark characters, because they are the richest to play. Anyway, this Cyrano has his thing, he is not entirely good. Being good bores me.
News: Apart from Bianco’s Cyrano, he saw others. Among them, that of Jean-Paul Belmondo in Paris. Did any of them inspire you the most to build your own Cyrano?
Goity: No, Rostand’s Cyrano is a very specific character and based on that everyone makes their own. Belmondo’s is more poetic, more traditional. The one by Gérard Depardieu, which I loved, is a little darker. But they are not comparable.
News: Before the premiere you were very complimentary of Landin’s work and after the premiere there was talk of a fight between the two, which you denied. What really happened?
Goity: I don’t know where that pineapple thing came from. Yes there were discussions, because Landin – who is a brilliant régisseur – concentrated a lot on the staging, which is magnificent – almost operatic -, and I asked to do more passes – especially in the case of this work – which he did not think was so necessary. They were passionate, heated discussions, because we are not biochemists, but there are almost always differences between the director and the actor. That was it. Landin is as much or more of a fan than I am of “Cyrano” and he was the right director for this production.
News: The duration of the work must have been quite an issue.
Goity: There we agreed that it couldn’t last more than three hours with an interval, because no matter how much you have Anthony Hopkins in front of you, there comes a time when you want to go eat a pizza. But it couldn’t last any less, because that would mean cutting off the essence of the work. “Cyrano” is a piece for people very committed to studying and their passion for the profession; and in this setting everyone is like that.
News: Returning to the “bad guys”, with his Zambrano in “The Manager” he must have felt in his element.
Goity: Without a doubt, but Cyrano is also a fascinating character, because I have to work on comedy, drama and tragedy, which is not easy at all. In the case of Zambrano, the challenge is to make it as credible as possible; and when people tell me they hate it, I feel very flattered (laughs).
News: For the second season of “The Manager” he told Guillermo Francella: “We won the street again.” I sense that I haven’t experienced something like this since “Los Roldán.”
Goity: Yes, there is hardly a block where they don’t tell me something about “The Manager.” And we should take advantage of the success of the series also abroad so that Argentina recovers the markets it lost.. Traveling as a young man through Latin America as a backpacker, I was given accommodation by actors like Luis Sandrini and Tita Merello, and now they tell me that if they don’t dub us in Spanish-Mexican, they won’t understand us. Don’t fuck with me! The traitors are inside, not outside, people who sold themselves for three more mangoes.
News: In 2023 he also filmed “Descansar en Paz”, the new film by Sebastián Borenztein. What can you tell me about her?
Goity: I think it will be something to talk about, because it is a drama based on the AMIA tragedy. There are also Joaquín Furriel and Griselda Siciliani, produced by Ricardo Darín; and working with Borenztein, as with Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat in “The Manager”, is glory.
News: As a young man he played rugby. Does the “Puma” thing come from there?
Goity: Yes, I played for the San Martin club for 14 years. It was not good, but since I am persistent, so that they would love me and be able to survive, I used to imitate the way of walking of Héctor “Pochola” Silva, great captain of Los Pumas. Then I was a coach in children’s and youth, and a referee. Now I try to go on Saturdays and When I die, I want them to put the San Martín shirt in the drawer.
News: Speaking of perseverance, in the end he achieved his desire to do “Cyrano” at the San Martín.
Goity: Yes, and I must thank Gabriela Ricardes, director of the theater until recently and today Secretary of Culture of Buenos Aires. If today at the San Martín there are several classics by her, it is because of her. In its origins, classical theater was popular, it was not for an elite. Shakespeare was popular, as was Enrique Santos Discépolo, our Shakespeare. Mozart and Beethoven were also popular. Good theater, like good music, is for everyone. I learned that.
News: When your military father saw that yours was more about theater than rugby, how did you take it?
Goity: He was surprised, but no more than the rest of the family. He was surprised as I was surprised that he liked being in the military. Dad went only to the premieres and had a rather severe look, but he never lost his way. If my son had told me that he wanted to be an actor, I would have reacted worse than him (laughs). Mom, perhaps inherited from Grandpa Modesto, was more enthusiastic; and this Cyrano is a tribute to all of them, to Bianco and also to that 16-year-old dreamer Gabriel.
by Sergio Núñez
