Laugh to laugh. Without little speeches, without the pretense of changing the world, without complexes, without the aspiration of a political pamphlet. Laughter, per se, It’s healthy. She doesn’t need anything else. For this reason, the theatrical comedy by Marcelo Casas, the killjoyIt’s so refreshing. The work makes the viewer forget about their problems and even the world in which we live, and spend more than an hour entertained with another reality, other characters and an undaunted smile.
Sergei (Josema Yuste) is a hired assassin who stays in a hotel with privileged views of the courthouse where a mafia informer who has to be killed will testify. But his task will be constantly interrupted by Ramón (Santiago Urrialde), the guest in the next room. A very, very heavy man, who intends to commit suicide after his wife has abandoned him.
the killjoyjust released in the Queen Victoria Theater, recovers the usual humor, which is so missed. ANDhe libretto is written by Francis Veber, also the author of the dinner of the idiotsall a theatrical ball. The comic situations are based on the excessive personality of both protagonists. Josema Yuste is brilliant in a register in which he feels very comfortable, and it shows.
The script gets all the juice out of Sergei, whom we see in various shades: from drowsy from the effect of a sedative to euphoric from too high a dose of amphetamine. It is in this last situation that one of the most hilarious moments of the play occurs, in which all the characters end up dancing absurdly. Vicente Renovell smiled at the function, as was inevitable.
Josema Yuste, well surrounded
Santiago Urialde also deserves a separate mention. It’s a role that fits the ‘total reporter’ like a glove – remember those hilarious interventions in the program of José María Íñigo?-. Despite Ramón’s terrible circumstances, he is so extremely annoying that empathizing with him is more difficult than seeing a politician apologizing.
The Spanish ‘pesao’ has many possibilities, and the reiteration, well applied, offers a lot of fun
The comedy appeals on the one hand to the gestures of the actors, who in true Jim Carrey style are capable of putting on hilarious faces, and on the other to classic Spanish humour. In many points he is reminiscent of Cruz and Raya, especially in his eagerness to exploit the figure of the ‘pesao’ as the center of laughter. “Turkey and chicken! Chicken and turkey! Pavooo!”, repeated over and over again a character in that mythical sketch by José Mota and Juan Antonio Muñoz.
The Spanish ‘pesao’ has many possibilities, and the reiteration, well applied, offers a lot of fun. ‘The party pooper’ is not afraid of repeating clichés, appealing to the simplest humor –seeing a big man like Santiago Urrialde with a giant, wobbly vibrator in his hands- and even touching on the politically incorrect with his characters. Ramón is, deep down, a stalker who doesn’t let his wife live a new life with his new partner, a psychiatrist.
It’s nice to see that there are artists who don’t shy away from today’s social prejudices and opt for art for art’s sake, comedy for comedy’s sake. As Lubitsch taught well in his film ‘What women think’, there is no greater ‘weight’ than an intense one, that is why the vulgar and routine is as refreshing as it is necessary. And it becomes less ‘heavy’.
