Without “art, the harshness of reality would make the world unbearable,” argued the great English playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), who was a fundamental influence on Western theater in the 20th century. The phrase comes to mind on the occasion of the plot of “Lila”, a proposal where, thanks to the theatrical device, the life, not at all simple, of a fictitious Argentine trans singer allows the viewer to identify and sympathize, leaving aside possible prejudices ancestral that, despite us, still persist in our society.
The protagonist of this almost single-person, Lilac (Ulysses Puiggros), He was born a man and was recorded with the name of Daniel. At the age of ten he began to feel that something different was happening. Raised as a male, he noticed that a woman was nesting inside his body. At eighteen she, as in so many similar cases, she was a victim of family misunderstanding and without contention, she was expelled from the home and she managed to survive by practicing street prostitution. After her, already installed in Spain, she discovered that she could build a new path where her love and acceptance would end up freeing her from her past. Like a butterfly that breaks the cocoon and emerges from the chrysalis to emanate beauty, she managed to transform herself into a singer who transmits glamor and charm. Back in Argentina, while she is carrying out her performance in a flirtatious Buenos Aires cabaret, she remembers her life in the loneliness of the dressing room or in front of her helpful wardrobe assistant (Débora Longobardi, also director). Thus, painful moments alternate with more jovial ones, seasoned with songs like “Perhaps, perhaps”, “I can’t wait to see you never again” and “Resistiré”, among others. The action takes place in the recently inaugurated cultural space Cástor y Pólux, set with striking scenographic elements, located on the border between San Telmo and Constitución.
Recommended show, especially for the tour de force performed by the actor whose construction of the character, a mixture of fragility and firmness of spirit, irremediably refers to the memory of the legendary and formidable Argentine artist, based in Barcelona, Ángel Pavlovsky, to who this chronicler was able to see act, decades ago, in a then luminous auditorium of the Bauen hotel.
