Ricardo III

Ricardo III was the first tragedy and one of the greatest successes of Shakespeare since its première of Hamlet together with Julia and Romeo, and turned into one of his most represented works. Shakespeare based its work literally on the history about King Richard III, Duke of Gloucester and member of House York, during the civil war in England, also known as Wars of the Roses. This war brought the two most important families of the United Kingdom into conflict: the Lancaster and the York, who fought for the absolute power over Great Britain. Ricardo, who is physically deformed and therefore excluded from the court life, decides to become a villain and kill for reaching his goal of being the crowned king of the United Kingdom.

After winning the Premio Nacional de Teatro in 2008 this performance was the first one of Atalaya and rounded off the first twenty-five years of its existence. With Ricardo III the four styles, which Atalaya has been alternating in the previous 18 shows, come together within one language: the surrealistic Lorca dream, the grotesque of Valle-Inclán and Maikovski, the telluric strength of the Greek Tragedy and the avant-garde and political compromise of Heiner Müller. One can say that if the classic Greeks have added the blood to our language, Valle and Lorca the lungs, Heiner Müller the nerve system, meanwhile Atalaya found its heart, which gives life and sense to the inner and outer existence, in Shakespeare.

In Ricardo III a score of characters show up, portrayed by nine actors of the Atalaya ensemble. Since the beginning of the eighties, when Carmen Gallardo co-founded the group, the ensemble has been incorporated by the stable core actors in the nineties and two thousands. Among them Jerónimo Arenal, who fulfilled his first 1,000 performances with Atalaya and portrayed Ricardo III in the same year of its premiere after 15 years of continuous work for the company.