Crónica del rey pasmado

Stage adaptation of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's novel reflecting on power and freedom of thought, written and directed by Cándido Pazó in the Sala Guirau of the Teatro Fernán Gómez.

The play takes as its starting point the anecdote that gave rise to Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's novel: a young monarch's wish to see his wife naked. Starting from this seemingly absurd premise, the show dwells on fear, hypocrisy, the control exercised from power and the obstacles placed on freedom of thought. The story is set in the Golden Age and works as a critique of social and political mechanisms that remain in force.

Cándido Pazó wrote and directs this production, which preserves the verbal sharpness and ironic tone of the original text and adds a stage language of its own. It is a comedy that does not seek a historical reconstruction: it combines Baroque and contemporary references in a dynamic stage space and makes use of artifice to address the audience directly and in a knowing, conspiratorial way.

Rather than taking the novel literally to the stage, the production plays with its characters, symbols and situations to raise questions about individual freedom, the possibility of imagining other worlds and resistance to a single, unquestioned way of thinking. The show is staged in the Sala Guirau of the Teatro Fernán Gómez. Centro Cultural de la Villa, in Madrid.