Shakespeare takes a bubble bath

As Eduardo Mendoza noted in Sin noticias de Gurb , this city has a terrible relationship with the clouds: "In Barcelona, it rains like its City Hall acts: rarely, but really." That was expected last Saturday, July 12, when cell phones warned that a major storm was approaching. In the end, it wasn't that bad, at least in the Catalan capital, but caution ruined what would have been the great cultural event of the season : a foam party, like in an '80s nightclub, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of La Ciutat Invisible (Riera d'Escuder, 38), a bookstore in Sants specializing in critical and hard-hitting essays. Read also Night fishing with rod and bait Olga Merino Disappointment. Depression. Children, young people, and longtime residents of the neighborhood would arrive asking about the supposed bubbles once the threat of a deluge had dissipated. Families would change plans on the fly: from the colossal soap bath to the tedious weekly grocery shopping trip. Read also Two unlikely sisters Olga Merino –My alarm didn’t go off. -How odd. –I came down from Molins de Rei, and it was really scary there. "Yeah. After what happened in Valencia, no one's taking the risk; no one wants to be a Mazón," declared the girl chatting with another customer, a young mother wearing a T-shirt that said "King Kong Queen." The foam party was supposed to be held in the open-air courtyard of La Comunal, a cultural hub located in a former 1925 textile warehouse, where La Ciutat Invisible coexists with seven other worker cooperatives. There was no foam, but there was a night of fun, bookseller Irene Jaume says, with musical bingo, dinner, and the satisfaction that the project continues. Read also The country that exhausts but does not bore Olga Merino Days passed and the chicharrera arrived, that cap of heat that has settled on Barcelona's heads; xafogor is a state of mind. The friendly shade of the linden trees and a light breeze somewhat relieved the audience that came to the Estació del Nord park on Monday to witness the Parking Shakespeare group's production of a late work by the immortal bard, perhaps his last, entitled Cymbeline ( King of Britain ). The audience settled into the stands arranged in a spiral, in concentric circles. It's a crazy romance, more comedy than drama, where the great English playwright threw various ingredients from his creative universe into the pot, haphazardly, until he came up with a peculiar stew: star-crossed lovers, a stepmother, conspiracies to overthrow the king, a poisonous potion, a boorish stepson, faithful servants, evil Romans, identity swaps, a murder, and several attempted murders; in short, a considerable candle. Critic Harold Bloom said that Shakespeare made Cymbeline a "parody of himself." Read also Do women read more than men? Leonor Mayor Ortega The play lasts four and a half hours, but Jenny Beacraft's Catalan version shortens it to 90 minutes with the introduction of a narrator who, to the audience's relief, explains the script breaks and the scissor tuning. The Parking Shakespeare actors, with exquisite diction, are on a roll, and some even play several roles at once. It's worth it, it's free, and the company performs it daily, at 7:00 p.m., until July 28 (except Tuesdays and Wednesdays). On Monday, they filled the reverse box office bin halfway with 5 and 10 euro bills. Joan Casas Fuster and Care Santos on Tuesday at the Obaga bookstore The passion that united Care Santos's parents had something Shakespearean about it, but no tragedy: the father, a doctor from Seville, a real bon vivant, a real character; the mother, a teenage beauty from Barcelona from a well-to-do family in the textile industry. They met in the 1950s, by letter, at the invitation of Cine Mundo magazine. The signs pointed to an impossible love, but no. Read also The ceremony of confusion Olga Merino After her mother's death, the writer from Mataró discovers a box containing their correspondence and concocts the novel L'amor que pasa (L'amor que pasa, or The Love That Passes ) (Columna/Destino). Chatting about it, we spent a delightful time on Tuesday at Obaga (Girona, 179), the cozy bookstore run by Carol and Dioni Porta, author, incidentally, of the novel Empujar el sol (Pushing the Sun) (Pepitas de Calabaza). Joan Casas Fuster, with a wonderful voice, played the presenter, and actress Mont Plans was in the audience.