‘Gratitudes’: Gloria Muñoz makes us cry

The audience that fills the Teatro de la Abadía in Madrid to see Las gratitudes, an adaptation of the successful novel by the French author Delphine de Vigan, are surely for the most part readers of the book. That is what productions based on bestsellers count on. But also on the flop if they do not meet expectations. This is not the case. One might even think that the protagonist was written for Gloria Muñoz. Many spectators leave with eyes swollen from crying.

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Gloria Muñoz is one of those veteran actresses who have done everything without making noise. Admired, respected, loved, but without fuss. Perhaps this is the role for which many will remember her. It is a pleasure to see how the progressive deterioration of the character is portrayed, the loss of speech, mobility. Subtly, without effects. It begins with small symptoms of aphasia, isolated words that escape or confuse her, but upright and combative. By the end of the performance, almost without realizing it, she cannot pronounce a full sentence. The body shrunk, the expression weak.

The character is named Michka and is an elderly woman who enters a nursing home because she can no longer live alone. She has no family, but there is a young woman (Macarena Sanz) who loves her and visits her. She practically raised her; her mother was a neighbor and had the girl half abandoned. We discover this through conversations in the nursing home room. Also, we learn that Michka’s parents died in a Nazi concentration camp. A speech therapist (Rómulo Assereto) also visits her, whom she grows fond of and tells things to.

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The novel lends itself well to theater because it has many dialogues, but it does not allow for much dramatic development. The best part is precisely the dialogues, through which the protagonist’s deterioration is manifested; by the way, translated very skillfully by Pablo Martín Sánchez. Gloria Muñoz nails that. Her co-stars perform adequately.

Director Juan Carlos Fisher, lately omnipresent on Spanish stages, once again demonstrates his good hand in directing actresses: let us remember Victoria Luengo in Prima Facie or Aitana Sánchez-Gijón in La madre. Here he uses his usual style. Clean staging, almost minimalist, well supported by lighting and sound to convey the turbulences of Michka’s mind. But he overdoes the musical highlights and the ending rushes towards sentimentality. The luck is that Gloria Muñoz does not.

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