'The Monster', a dark highway of memory

A woman asks her partner why he's returning home along the old, winding road when the new, straight, and bright road is still there. The protagonists of Josep Maria Miró 's ' El monstre ' (The Monster) share a similar geography to two previous titles: 'The Most Beautiful Body Ever Found in This Place' and 'The Stewardess'. These are stories of rural settings that have transitioned from a prosperous industrial age to a decline only tempered by the tourist season. Small mountain villages where everyone knows everyone. Outskirts where dirty, unconfessable business takes place: between the asphalt of the road and a forest that hides old quarrels between neighbors.

The couple has received a call from a mutual friend from their childhood. He disappeared twenty years ago and went down in history as "the Monster" after being involved in a tragic event that no one wants to remember. The Monster bursts into their domestic routine with uncomfortable questions. The night of memory is the dark, winding road they've transformed into a highway to avoid the most sordid turns. They, who had tailor-made the past to cope with the present, are about to come face to face with truths about their lives they'd wanted to erase: "The past is what you remember, what you imagine you remember, what you convince yourself you remember, or what you pretend you remember," they warn.

Miró adds a twist to the construction of a narrative from diverse points of view. And he does so in a dark and bare stage space, very conducive to the characters' confessions. At times, the narrative darkness is too dense: the audience gets lost in the author's symbolic forest. Although this "monster" isn't as original as "The Most Beautiful Body Ever Found in This Place" due to the repetition of the formula, the lead trio – Àurea Márquez, Joan Negrié, and Albert Prat – recreates the dreamlike atmosphere and suspense required by this piece, winner of the Jardiel Poncela Prize. Miró once again swings between the uncomfortable truths of individuality and their deceptive translation into a collective narrative. The challenge of a Pinter admirer.