Divinas palabras

Antonio Campos performs a one-man version of Divinas palabras, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán's play about a rural Galician family that exploits a boy with hydrocephalus by begging for alms with him. The staging is by Javier Uriarte.

The production does not reproduce the original text word for word. Under the direction of Javier Uriarte, it carries the essence of the play into contemporary language and reduces the choral dimension to concentrate the conflict in a single figure on stage. The performance and the force of the spoken word carry the story, and a good part of what is staged is left to the audience's imagination.

The action is set in the rugged Galicia of misery, violence and superstition. Mari-Gaila and her husband, Pedro Gailo, a sacristan, are at the heart of the story. After the death of Juana la Reina, a beggar and Pedro's sister, the family takes in Laureano, a boy with hydrocephalus whom they take from village to village begging for alms, until he becomes practically their main source of income. When Marica del Reino, Pedro's other sister, takes him away to exploit him too, a dispute breaks out between the two families that worsens until it leads to increasingly cruel acts.

Valle-Inclán blends the grotesque, the tragic and the esperpentic to portray human degradation, so that the spectator can move from laughter to discomfort or horror in very little time. The show is performed in the Sala Jardiel Poncela of the Teatro Fernán Gómez, Centro Cultural de la Villa, a theatre that focuses its programme on the stage and also hosts concerts.