EL TIEMPO TODO ENTERO

The entire whole time

after The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

El tiempo todo entero (The entire whole time): a closed session in which four characters, representing four different kinds of suffering, are set at odds with each other. The first of them, Lorenzo, the brother, wants to leave the country; the second one, Antonia, the sister, refuses to leave the house; the third one, Ursula, the mother, wishes that her daughter would spread her wings and fly; and the fourth one, Maximiliano, a friend, provides possibly the golden opportunity for pushing her to do so.

As in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, from which El tiempo todo entero is very loosely inspired, the characters are suffocating in this living-room bathed in bright light which is never dimmed, and where time seems not to pass. Glued to the screen of her computer, Antonia has a highly developed taste for macabre stories. Lorenzo, for his part, prefers to seek refuge in his reading, which transports him outside the four walls of the family house. Their mother comes and goes, always coming back. The characters feel that they are from here but also from elsewhere. We know that Antonia and her brother were born in Mexico, where their mother lived for a while.

Nothing is said explicitly about the history of Argentina, because Romina Paula's writing is so open and suggestive, always leaving the door open to multiple interpretations. Nevertheless, reading between the lines, we can see a wound. And the pain never goes away. The key to the play lies perhaps in a certain self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, a woman whose life and works haunt these four characters, and who depicted herself with her chest cut open, her heart ripped out and fallen on the ground, bleeding to death. That is indeed what the play shows us: bitter heartbreaking pain.

Introduction taken from the programme of the Festival d’Automne in Paris, 2011