★★★ Ask me if I ever wanted to have three children”, Alicia expresses, with contained anguish, to her son Eduardo, in one of the sharp and stark dialogues of “The Barbarian Gestures”.
In the piece, written by the young and prolific Argentine playwright Juan Ignacio Fernández, the character of Alicia (Silvina Sabater), is a terrible mother who has not wanted to have three children, but reluctantly gave in, under pressure from her husband, the former mayor of the lost town in which the action takes place.
The offspring are Eduardo (Ignacio Rodríguez de Anca), who follows the paternal line, is also engaged in politics and is married to Isabela (Laura Novoa), with whom they have, now grown up, a little baby named
Lara. She is followed by Emilia (Valentina Bassi), who returns to her family home after fifteen years, after suffering a car accident that left her with consequences and she can hardly remember anything from the past. The youngest is Tadeo (Francisco Bertín), a wandering boy, who does not find his way in life, burns fields as an act of rebellion and to whom the matriarch of the family, very aware of “what they will say” and the opinion of the Others, it tries to get away from the small-town existence.
As in almost every family meeting, in the conversations the differences, the reproaches, the crossed accusations and the feeling of dissatisfaction emerge. None seems to be convinced of the role that they have to live in that dysfunctional family, like so many others that the theater has reflected throughout its history. Although, if we were to venture a metaphor for what happens on stage, that subtly fierce matron, she could well represent the country and the ancestral need to expel the weak or the different from the courtly circle in which we live.
Although the director Cristian Drut (he directed “Tu amor sea refuge”, by the same author), works the links subtly, the proposal becomes somewhat cryptic. In favor it has a homogeneous cast, in which the female presences stand out. Bassi, as the troubled girl who has lost track of reality; Novoa, in the skin of the woman who has great difficulty relating to her child; and Sabater, in the role of the lady who would like to continue pulling the strings of her lineage at will. However, Rodríguez de Anca and Bertín are not far behind.