Late night in Barcelona. An American tourist goes home with a handsome Spaniard. What begins as a carefree, one-night stand becomes an invitation to danger, as the personal and political catastrophically intertwine.
By turns funny, sexy and surprising, BARCELONA is a seductive thriller that will keep audiences guessing - exploring the fantasy of who we pretend to be, versus the truth of who we are.
With star turns from Lily Collins (Emily in Paris, To The Bone, Mank) and Álvaro Morte (Money Heist, Wheel of Time, Immaculate), Lynette Linton directs the West End premiere of Bess Wohl’s explosive play - running for 12 weeks only at London’s Duke of York’s Theatre.
__Assisted Performances__
Audio Described – Monday 25th November 8.00pm
Captioned – Monday 2nd December 8.00pm
It isn’t just Wohl’s script that feels anodyne: the timing for tense arguments is off, meaning language sometimes crescendos unnaturally, making disagreements between the pair feel forced. There are also issues with the structure: when Lily Collins’ Irene runs for the door halfway through the show, Manuel begs her not to leave, but Irene is so irritating that you don’t believe him. When the script does finally start to heat up like a Barcelona morning, the twist is too gentle to rouse more than a cursory interest.
The drama, which had its premiere in the US in 2013, is set soon after the election of Barack Obama, giving Wohl an opportunity to indulge in some tired sparring about American parochialism and European worldliness. Irene is a woefully ignorant estate agent from Denver who thinks everything is “cute”. On a rowdy bachelorette party, she picks up the older, enigmatic Manuel who takes her back to an apartment littered with house-moving boxes. There’s an explosion of tipsy, erotic energy at first. Then secrets slowly rise to the surface as Lynette Linton’s production ticks along. Jai Morjaria’s subdued lighting casts shadows in the set designer Frankie Bradshaw’s domestic interior.
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