One of the most successful co-productions of the Grec 2024 Barcelona Festival returns to the stage, a new staging of a comedy written more than three hundred years ago, adapted to today & explained in the language of our times, is as effective and up-to-date as the day it was written. Come and see how the company La Brutal shows us that everything has changed, but, in essence, it is still the same. From 4 December to 4 January, at the Teatre Lliure Montjuïc.

Actor David Selvas directs the play, which is based on a dramaturgy by Sergi Pompermayer with versification by Pablo Macho Otero, a playwright trained at the Sala Beckett with Jordi Oriol, Paco Zarzoso and Alfredo Sanzol, among others, who made a name for himself in 2014 with Els Malnascuts. As performers, Mireia Aixalà, playing Célimène (pictured. Photo: Marc Mampel) and Pol López, as Alceste, as well as Laia Alsina, Júlia Genís, Norbert Martínez, David Menéndez, Àlex Pereira and Albert Prat.

The play was written in 1666, when Molière was ill and his wife had already abandoned him, so it is not surprising that this play expresses itself in a very critical way, talking about humanity and society. Perhaps love is the only feeling that will save us? The author wrote in verse a play in five acts that takes place in a single day.

In the version that you can see at the Teatre Lliure, co-produced by the Grec 2024 Festival de Barcelona, the main character expresses as well as in the original the discomfort with those who surround him and the criticism of a society that he considers hypocritical, covetous and conformist, but does so by presenting us with situations that bring us into today’s world.

You can see that, in thproposal by La Brutal, the main character works in a record company and when he looks at the world that surrounds him, he does so with a language representing today’s idioms. Yes, perhaps the original of this story was written centuries ago, but here you will not only find mobile phones, songs and dancing like today’s, but you will also hear about practices that have recently been given English names, such as ‘mansplaining’ or ‘ghosting’.

Perhaps what has changed are the names we give to the different situations we experience, but human nature remains the same as it was in Molière’s time, or almost. Honesty and hypocrisy, personal ethics and life in society, reason and passion, the limits of kindness and fairness… These are some of the reflections of the setting which, yes, were brilliant in 1666 and which, today, are just as valid. What are Alceste and Célimène like in the 21st century? Here they explain it to you.

This is the last production premiered at the Grec 2024 Festival de Barcelona, which is back in Barcelona’s theatres. Between September and October we have seen performances at the Grec ranging from the musical Artemis, to Les mans (directed by Sílvia Munt), Poncia (by Luis Luque), Tots ocells (by Wajdi Mouawad), L’últim dia (the latest creation by Lluïsa Cunillé) and Em dic Josep, as well as new versions of classics such as Tirant Lo Blanc adapted by Màrius Serra, which was performed a few weeks ago at the Teatre Romea.

If you don’t want to miss one of the productions that premiered at the Grec 2024 Festival in Barcelona and which rescues in today’s language an immortal work three centuries old, come and see El misantrop, but first check Teatre Lliure website for information on the production