La Dama de Reus

Ambrosi Carrion

Theatre The Teatre Nacional de Catalunya wants to recover a figure almost unknown to the general public: Ambrosi Carrion, one of the most prolific and interesting playwrights of the mid-20th century in Catalonia. And, at the same time, it also seeks to defend the memory of exile, which truncated Catalan cultural life after the Spanish Civil War. In La Dama de Reus (1949, Ignasi Iglésias Award in 1950), Carrion reworks a well-known story in European popular tradition of the 17th century and deeply rooted in Catalan tradition: an extraordinarily beautiful lady, forced by the need and meanness of her husband’s family, is obliged to go to bed with the tyrant who governs the city to save her husband’s life. Love and passion confront the yearning for vengeance. La Dama de Reus is surprising because of its modern Catalan and its agile verse with a fluid phrasing. Ambrosi Carrion, moreover, manages to give his characters a fascinating complexity and ambivalence, which allow him to introduce a series of psychological conflicts that go beyond legend and finally lead to a surprising end.