Alejandro Sawa’s 1888 play offers an unflinching portrait of a Spanish family living under oppression
Auditorio de Tenerife presents ‘Noche’, a co-production by Teatro Español and the theatre company Micomicón, at La Salita this weekend. Written by the Spanish bohemian writer and journalist Alejandro Sawa and published in 1888, the play will be performed on Friday 16 and Saturday 17 October at 7.30 pm, and on Sunday 18 October at noon. A post-show discussion with the company will follow Friday’s performance. Standard tickets cost €8.
Noche offers a revealing glimpse of the emergence of Naturalism in late nineteenth-century Spanish theatre, portraying a society marked by hunger and a preoccupation with outward appearances. At its centre is Don Francisco, an authoritarian, deeply religious father who seeks to impose order and virtue on his household through repression and faith. Yet his obsession with morality and appearances ultimately brings about the destruction of the very thing he is desperate to protect: his family. The cast comprises Ástrid Janer, Roser Pujol, Alberto Jiménez and Jorge Varandela.
Against a backdrop of hunger, social hypocrisy and decline, Sawa lays bare the devastating effects of religious fanaticism, poverty and rigid social conventions. His literary imagination helps explain why Ramón María del Valle-Inclán drew on him when creating Max Estrella, the celebrated protagonist of Luces de bohemia.
Tickets cost €8, or €5 for under-30s, and are available at www.auditoriodetenerife.com, from the box office (Monday to Friday, 10.00 am–5.00 pm; Saturday, 10.00 am–2.00 pm) or by calling 902 317 327 during box-office hours. La Salita’s next production will be Deserto, by the Brazilian theatre company Polifônica, on 30 and 31 October and 1 November.
Founded in Madrid in 1991, Micomicón Teatro has staged around 30 productions. During its first decade, the company concentrated on Spain’s rich classical theatrical repertoire. Towards the end of the twentieth century, it began developing original plays by Laila Ripoll and Mariano Llorente. Since then, its work has expanded from Golden Age drama to contemporary theatre. The company is recognised both for its interpretations of Spanish classics and for contemporary productions exploring the country’s recent history. Its ongoing theatrical journey confronts political violence, civil wars, colonialism, concentration camps, unresolved trauma, repression and terrorism.