The Teatro Español, part of the Culture, Tourism and Sport Area of the City Hall of Madrid, has premiered Noche, one of the most unique and representative works of Spanish naturalism.
Written in 1888 by Alejandro Sawa, an unclassifiable figure whose life would later inspire Max Estrella de Valle-Inclán, Noche emerges as a disturbing portrait of a family trapped in poverty, fanaticism and appearance. A journey into the moral shadows of an age where material misery coexisted with a fierce obsession for public virtue.
The story revolves around Don Francisco, an authoritarian and deeply religious father who tries to maintain family order through repression, faith and fear. But it is precisely this obsession with purity and duty that triggers the destruction of what it claims to protect: its own family. Under the apparent defense of good, Sawa portrays a structural violence that crosses generations and condemns, above all, women, reduced to servitude that only find escape in transgression, clandestinity or renunciation.
Mariano Llorente picks up that raw pulse and moves it to a staging that explores the moral, social and affective cracks of the text from a contemporary language. His direction embraces the harshness of Sawa, but also seeks, amid so much darkness, a little hope. As the director himself writes, with Noche “we are going to embark on a journey towards very hard areas of the human being, in the hope, yes, that what we show will allow the entry of some ray of light”.
The cast consists of Alberto Jiménez as Don Francisco and Don Gregorio, Àstrid Janer as Paquita and Lolita, and Roser Pujol as Doña Dolores y la voz narradora. All of them give life to this suffocating universe with an emotional precision that sustains the tension of the text. Tickets can be purchased at this link.
