“Les Variacions GOLDBEGR”

George Tabori, “Les Variacions GOLDBERG”, Teatres de la Generalitat Valenciana, direcció de Joseph Maria Mestres.

Cast:

-Mr. Jota: Enric Benavent

-Goldberg: Josep Manel Casany

-Raamah: Juansa Lloret.

-Masch: Ferrán Gadea

-Jafet: Manolo Ochoa

-Mari: Cristina García

-Ernestina Van Veen: Iolanda Muñoz

-Teresa Tormentina: Nuria García

-Angels de l’infern: Manolo Maestro

Jordi Gomar

Pau Blanco

11 of December in 2005, Teatre Rialto (Plaza Ayuntamiento, 17).

“Les Variacions GOLDBERG” is a play whose theme is THE BIBLE.

The play shows us the history of a company of theatre where the director starts the works, next to his assistant Goldberg, to performance a spectacle about the bible.

The stage is full of all of kind of resources, for instants, the stairs in the bottom of the stage through which some of the characters come in scene ( Mr. Jota who represents to be God and who come down of the sky) or the musical instrument that the angles of the hell and the daises used to represent the crucifixion.

Mr. Jota is a thyrannical and mediocre director and Goldberg is his young assistant. Another interesting character is a woman who appears always in scene cleaning. She is Mari.

I think that the performance has four symbolic main scenes:

-GENESIS: The characters performance the creation of the man and of the woman and, with them, the creation of the sin: the fornication (the banana appears a lot of times as a phallic symbol), the menstruation of the woman, the obligatory obedience of the woman to the man, etc.

-MOSES and the boards of the ten commandment: the revolt of the jewish town where appears the young bull of gold as a symbol to venerate.

-CRUCIFIXION: It is the violence and the death performed in an excellent way by the characters.

-SACRIFICE: Death of Isaac by his father Abraham in front of his mother Sara.

The bible is being created through the play. It is the creation of the world where, little to little, the sin, the pardon, the love to the other, etc, is being created.

At the end of the play Mr. Jota says a monologue explaining that he, father of Jesus, don’t understand his ideas and his way to say it. It is the promulgation of the GOSPEL.

Finally, a specific phrase is said “God is perfect because there are not anything”.

Opinion

This play has been very difficult to understand for me because I think that it is very dense. There is a lot of information.

In the same way it has been very difficult to summary for me because of the great sum of vocabulary and its difficulty. I have had to look for a lot of words in the dictionary.

I hope that you could understand my interpretation of the play.