El patico feo show arrives at its hundred staging

For the theater players, interpreters of an ephemeral art, like life itself, getting to the hundred functions is a reason to celebrate. We celebrate the persistence of a delivery that becomes eternal the time the show lasts. Teatro de Las Estaciones up to a hundred performances of the play The ugly patico (musical landscape in four times for masks, figures and actors), next Saturday, November 25th, at 11:00 in the morning, in the tables of the Pepe Camejo Room.

Eleven years after its premiere, on August 26, 2006, at the mythical Teatro Nacional de Guiñol, the staging inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s story, which was most liked by Matanzas writer Dora Alonso, is still alive, with a cast as renewed as its current viewers, who are not the same as a decade ago and a little more. The verses of the poet, critic and playwright Norge Espinosa that sustain the plot, sung by the soprano Mayuley Álvarez, and played by the pianist and composer Elvira Santiago, continue to amaze everyone.

Havana, Matanzas and Sancti Spíritus are the provinces of our territory that have applauded it; beyond the seas we have been to the World Puppet Festival of Charleville-Mezieres, France; and in the green mountains, in Vermont; the Zún Zún children’s playground in La Florida; the one of Puppeteers of America in Minneapolis, plus the unforgettable performance at the SEA Theater, in New York, United States, where we were nominated in acting and staging for the awards of the Association of Show Writers (ACE), of that cosmopolitan city.

The inaugural cast composed by Fara Madrigal, Migdalia Seguí, Freddy Maragotto and Yerandy Basart, were joined by actors Luis Torres, Francis Ruiz, Luis Toledo, up to the current ones, María Laura Germán, Karen Sotolongo, Iván García and Yadiel Durán. The choreography continues to be by Liliam Padrón, the costumes, figures, stage designs and lights by Zenén Calero.

Awarded in Cuba with the Villanueva Award for theater criticism in 2006, El patico feo has accompanied us since we did not have our own workspace. Returning it today to our headquarters, to celebrate its persistence in the taste of the public and the theatrical specialists, makes me immensely happy as artistic director of a production that occupies number 20 in our repertoire and I hope it will be that way for a long time.