I cannot resist telling you about the emotion I felt when I sat down again in an armchair at the Apolo Theater, the first stage venue that I knew in my adolescence – oh! – sixty years ago. Then Gracia Imperio reigned there and the clever and intelligent businessman Matías Colsada ruled behind the scenes. Since that time, it can be said that I have missed very few premieres of those that took place there, I experienced the demolition of the old wooden beam theater from the early twentieth century and the new construction of the nineties that Tania Doris reopened and I knew after the unfortunate event that the Apollo has had and that led it to remain closed for more than a year and to doubt its survival. Fortunately, it has been rescued by a new company that has ensured its viability and has chosen to be faithful to the musical genre that characterized its programming for so many decades.
Following the success of its Madrid premiere, “Antoine” has been presented, a musical comedy inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, that intrepid French aviator who covered the first airlines between Europe and Africa when pioneer pilots flew with planes almost toy, something that almost cost him his life in Libya. He was head of scale for the Aeropostale company in the Spanish town of Cabo Jubi, then lived in South America, traveled half the world, worked as a journalist, wrote several memoir books and a novel, many chronicles and a short story, “The little prince” , which is a true classic of children’s literature of all time and, when the Second World War broke out, he settled in the United States from where he returned to Europe to intervene in the war as an aviator in the service of the Allies, which cost him disappear in action of war in 1944. It seems that lately his plane was located in the depths near the coast of Lyon.
Aviator, writer, war hero and protagonist of a stilted sentimental life, he is certainly a character capable of inspiring any literary creator or theatrical producer. Such is the case of Regattieri, who commissioned Ignasi Vidal to write and direct a libretto set to music by the group “Elefantes” formed by Shuarma, Jordi Ramiro, and Julio Cascán. By the way, Suharma himself is the interpreter of the role of the Little Prince, alternating this task with Jan Forrellad -who is who we saw in the function we attended-, while Javier Navares plays Saint-Exupéry. They are accompanied on stage by Beatriz Ros, Marta Emes, Ana Dachs, Víctor Massán, Vicenç Miralles, Paula Moncada, Alberto Vázquez, who unfold around a scenography by Alessio Meloni, concise and suggestive, in which the upper half of a little planet from which the Little Prince and some other characters in the story emerge. There is nothing else, except for some accessory scenic element, such as the cockpit seat in which the aviator would have to make his last flight.
“Antoine” is, at the same time, a journey through the life of Saint-Exupéry interspersed with the characters, sentences, situations and messages that the author of the story wanted to convey to his readers. A simple language, but not at all banal, full of poetry, tolerance and humanism, apparently aimed at children, but that adults can digest even with the same or greater use. A careful and imaginative lighting by Felipe Ramos optimizes the few scenic resources and prints on the surface of the little planet or the back curtain the drawings with which Saint-Exupéry illustrated the story and the messages that the scriptwriter wanted to underline from the many it contains. the literary work of the French author.
A very beautiful, white musical, capable of being enjoyed by all audiences, intelligible but not exempt from a subliminal discourse that it tries to interpret, we believe correctly, the spirit, the work and even the tragic adventures of the famous aviator and writer.
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