Irregular séance in Soho

My friend Juan Torres, a playwright and poet, always talks to me about the futility of theater. Lacking an audience, impact, defeated by cinematic realism, current television, and the brevity of TikToks, unable to mobilize or challenge disbelief, what social or ritual function does it still have? It's not a bad question. If theater is on its way to becoming a museum piece, perhaps all that's left is to converse with its ghosts.

And there's no shortage of ghosts, from Hamlet's father to the mocking spirits of Noël Coward. Also, those who before us stepped onto the boards of this country of fiction thinking it was worthwhile. We don't know if any wander through the Teatro del Soho Caixabank, but in 'The Phantom Woman,' a creation by T de Teatre which has also been seen at the Teatre Romea in Barcelona and at the Centro Dramático Nacional, there is a tribute to these latter. "The light is the theater," they repeat several times in this play written and directed by the Argentine Mariano Tenconi Blanco, and we already know that the light of the footlights separating the actor from the spectator is also a thin veil between life and death. With four monologues, accompanied live by piano and cello, Tenconi tenderly, humorously, elegantly, and with much literature, portrays the inner world of four women teachers from the 70s with different conflicts: one suffers over her ex-husband, another over her mother's death, a third recounts a physical relationship with a younger teacher, and the last her relationship with four specters that appeared while she was teaching theater. Each carries their own ghosts, each appeals to the imagination in a slightly interconnected small universe.

As it was the first, I followed Marta Pérez's monologue with interest, well-executed in her resentment, but hoping for something more in the next and for some dialogue to emerge among the actresses in some way. It didn't happen until the end. The second monologue, also splendidly performed by Mamen Duch, made me switch to audiobook listener mode. The third was saved by the comic timing of Àgata Roca, while the fourth, by Carme Pla, completely disconnected me. There can be no fault found with the four actresses from T de Teatre, their transformation is beyond question, but the structure of the staging is a burden too heavy. And mind you, not because of the use of inner monologue—I remember 'Better' by Mattia Torre, as a superb example of a single actor telling a richly nuanced story with characters—but because of repeating the same scenic solutions over and over again.

Was any ghost invoked? I'm not sure. Perhaps that of Elisabet Casanovas, whose voiceover opened and closed the show, wondering, like my friend Juan, what on earth do we want theater for nowadays. These ghosts left too many questions at the Teatro del Soho Caixabank, where they will dwell on October 3 and 4, hopefully others will come later with some answers.