Lily Collins (Emily in Paris) and Álvaro Morte (Money Heist) are our leads in Bess Whol’s Barcelona, the play directed by Lynette Linton. Collins and Morte play Irene and Manuel respectively. Two people who come together in bar and unfold each other’s secrets over the course of a night.
The play is set up thus. It’s the early 2000’s. Late night in Barcelona. American tourist Irene goes home with handsome Spaniard Manuel. Beginning as a carefree, one-night stand it becomes a high-stakes clash of intention and desire, as the personal and political intertwine. I didn’t quite know what to expect having read this, but I did think I was in for something that might sizzle with electricity. When we are introduced to Irene and Manuel, they are stumbling into his small apartment, (a beautifully realised set by Frankie Bradshaw, that looks just as you imagine an apartment in Barcelona should.
All pastel colours, open planned kitchenette and living room) they are full of flirtatious banter and playful energy of people who have just met and mean nothing to one another. Irene is evidently a certain stereotypical type of American tourist, and Collins brings a lot of energy to this loud, seemingly shallow but bubbly, at times brash character. She frequently mispronounces Manuel’s name “Manelo”, “Manolo”, it changes throughout with the pronunciation getting worse the more she drinks. It is played for laughs for quite some time interwoven with many make out scenes in that first half.
The audience laughs, Manuel laughs too, up to a point. It quickly becomes tiresome as does her character. Manuel is less stereotypically drawn, and Morte is quietly arresting as the interactions between the two become ever tense as the evening evolves. You feel he is equal parts drawn to and repelled by Irene. You see the conflict in his face as well as his movements alone and around her.
The mood cools relatively quickly, and that tension builds. Banter turning into debate, given and taken, each calling out the other’s national pride, political views and cultural intelligence (or lack of same) in some entertaining and dynamic, but quite predictable exchanges. At some point Irene says, “Just because I’m American, doesn’t mean that I’m American with a Capital “A”. I chuckled here.
As time goes on, several secrets are revealed, and the two-hander attempts to strip away the layers of each of these characters. One of the secrets, relating to Manuel’s presence in this apartment and his increasing sombre mood, with half packed boxes (he starts out saying he’s moving the next morning) and the stuffed toy on a shelf, isn’t as moving as it should be because I haven’t had time to really care very much about these two, or why they are there.
There are some tender extended exchanges between the two in the second half that were acted solidly. I must say, Irene clocked the cues in the apartment leading her naively delving into the missing woman of the house, before I did. I didn’t see that reveal coming, but after that everything unfolded as if painting by numbers. It wasn’t so much to do with the acting. It was the script, the pacing of the plot, the feeling of trying too hard for either laughs or for empathy. I felt simultaneously the feeling of everything taking too long, and yet not having time enough to get invested in them, and to care what happened to them in the end.
The most touching moments for me were not, Irene’s realisations about the emptiness of her life or through her jostling with Manuel that she doesn’t love her fiancé. (This is another reveal by Manuel himself, who of course, knew all along) Nor was it entirely Manuel’s tender if slightly overwrought scenes centring his grief. They were the moments when he speaks of this, when we come to understand whom Irene reminds him of.
When the two come full circle and reach some kind of personal and mutual reconciliation, when you see several times the dancing shadow of his late loved one on the wall…
With the lovely use of light and shade again doing some heavy lifting emotionally, this was touching…
I wanted to like this play, and I appreciated certain elements but I was left feeling too much was crammed into 90 minutes.
Need to know: Barcelona plays at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 11 January 2025
