Noche de reyes

We are in Iliria, a somewhat unlikely place where time would appear to have stood still. Viola, who has been saved from death in a terrible shipwreck in which she lost her twin brother, Sebastian, is washed up by the sea. Her eyes and her voice move the world, they shake him until he can contemplate himself and come back to life.

Taking a play on identity to the limit, as never before, Shakespeare delights us with a flurry of secrets, conscious or unconscious untruths, and enigmas waiting to be deciphered. Wishes and desires come true for a moment and we find we are confused, we and the characters as well, because the point of view of the world changes. What is theatre if not a journey through the imagination that renews life by altering perspectives?

Written in 1602, Noche de Reyes is one of Shakespeare’s most admired comedies in which the audience is a co-protagonist of the events. The spectator is ethically and psychologically questioned and forced to assume a certain moral responsibility imposed on him or her by the author who then releases them from that same responsibility through laughter and other theatrical devices. Humour infuses the words of this sparkling comedy with freedom and transcends the stage to make us enjoy, feel and ponder with a great deal of laughter. And after the laughter has died down: “A great while ago the world begun and the rain it raineth every day”, sings Feste, the jester, reminding us of the disenchantment that is part and parcel of being alive.

In this boundless poem, Shakespeare plunges us into the sea and then casts us onto the sand. We must always be reborn, die and be born again. In his comedies, amidst all the laughter and sorrow, there is a journey into danger, towards the unknown in which dwells the identity we need to know. No matter how much we try to deny nature, it rebels against us and shows itself. Disguise, play, passion, mockery, puns and poetry come to our aid and decipher the mechanisms of knowledge of the soul of the world and of each one of us.

Helena Pimenta