From Cultura Estadao (translated from Portuguese)

By Jefferson Del Rios

Gerald Thomas seeks the synthesis of many contemporary impasses.

‘Groucho Marxism’ of the author prevents Part themes remain serious.

In between his teeth, there are signs of soot from the New York Twin Towers. The author and director Gerald Thomas was in town and was involved with the incident, working as a volunteer. In the same piece, this multicultural artist, but born and raised in Rio, Brazil fully shown, even that eventually will say otherwise. September 11 and misfortunes in politics and administration Brazil the lead to work with moments of indignation.

In a high-load emotive solo, beautiful and vital Portuguese actress Maria de Lima, speaking on prosody of the original language, is a protest against the ills of the country which, since the 1600s, Gregorio foresaw the sad poem Bahia. 

In the centuries that followed, these deviations were seen in weight studies, such as the owners of power, Raymundo Faoro. The intervention of the actress, the best part of the text summarizes sociology and cultural anthropology about what we do wrong, not by an ethnic-genetic absurd, but historical and economic-structural precise reasons. At this point, Gerald Thomas reflects the Anglo-Saxon world in which the Protestant ethic suggests – and watch – seriousness standards in dealing with public affairs call.

Then, the play resumes assumed skeptical tone and mocking Thomas, even the mention of political and international military conflicts. Synthesis of many dead ends, the scene presents a Muslim and a Jew on the wall that symbolizes the Western Wall in Jerusalem, attached to a front slum. The symbolism is strong, but the “Groucho Marxism” prevents it remains serious. With another nuance, perhaps black humor, you could combine grace with the forcefulness of Maria de Lima. Anyway, this is understandable part of muttered.

Otherwise, the viewer enters the subjective maze that the author himself explains: “I write for the person with the idiosyncrasies that one has So I’ll use what the actor or actress has to offer and what you have to. worse too. the ways, the phenomenon that it is, wonder what it is, but also its dark side. “

In this case, fortunately, we have the warm side, autoirônico and light melancholy of the remarkable actor Ney Latorraca in partnership with Edi Botelho, matured interpreter well together the shards of Gerald Thomas prose. Ney does not seek to impose, although clearly has the audience at his side. It is even an air distracted from who is there to represent what comes to mind, although everything is calculated. Since his time School of Dramatic Art, entertains friends with the number of “receive the holy.” It brings back, hilarious, these “entities”. Speaking of himself, in the character and vice versa, Ney could have as a backdrop the six-story building where she lived in Campinas Rua Barão in São Paulo. In these sequences,

The problem is the imbalance between opposites. In theory, the goal is to “lock in the spirit of the times, technology, fundamentalism, geopolitics,” etc., etc. Paradox of a style approaching the high creativity with will épater, either by Wittgenstein’s quote, Deleuze or heavy sexual references. A game in which everything can end up in looks and words, words.

It is halfway between Beckett, which exerts a fascination on the director, and the French group Magic Circus Jerome Savary (1942-2013), which incorporated the opera, comic books and Molière. Gerald Thomas has more to say about the evils of his homeland and that of residence (United States) or on contemporary dilemmas such as the “banality of good”, visible in the transformation of technological progress, the Internet, in cognitive drug addiction ( virtual withdrawal, smartphones as an extension of the body itself), the definition of Professor Julius Groppa Aquino, the Faculty of Education at USP.

In any case, except for the free eschatologies, it is interesting to note in insolence through his teeth one above and ambiguities by a smart cast, which is headed by the always welcome Ney Latorraca.