La colmena

Stage adaptation of Camilo José Cela's novel, directed by Ignacio García, which portrays post-war Madrid through a broad mosaic of characters played by a cast of eight actors.

La colmena, a key work of twentieth-century Spanish literature, reaches the stage in an adaptation by Eduardo Galán directed by Ignacio García. Cela's text brings together more than 300 characters, and this production condenses them into 40 figures brought to life by a cast of eight actors.

The character of Martín Marco serves as the through-line, while the rest of the cast plays the multitude of protagonists. The staging retains the choral narration and the simultaneity of actions from the novel, and recreates spaces such as Doña Rosa's café, the streets of Madrid, the metro, the bakery and the brothel. Through them pass characters battered by scarcity and the need to survive in the early 1940s.

The adaptation follows the original text almost entirely: the dialogue comes almost wholly from Cela, and the added interventions serve to link scenes and give continuity to the plot. Radio adverts, NO-DO newsreels and references to newspapers of the day complete the historical context. The result is a collective portrait of those who struggled to get by in one of the harshest periods of Spain's recent past.