They are so, so, so fun that on many occasions this causes us to overlook the many theatrical values that each of the productions has. Las Meninaswhich are once again on the billboard with a sensational show: Hernán Cortés, our first villain.
Las Meninas (originally New Spain), is a concept born more than a decade ago, and is an example of creativity and exhaustive preparation (more than 25 productions prove this) that has become an absolute success.
For those who have not yet located them Las Meninas They are three women who lived in Mexico in the 18th century, and who were accused by the Holy Inquisition, from which they were able to escape thanks to a spell, which left them captured in a painting. Now, the spell has been broken and the tremendous women are back to tell various episodes of the history of Mexico, from their very sharp and humorous point of view.
Today, it is the turn of a new updated version of Hernán Cortés, which tells the adventures (or misadventures) of the conqueror of the great Tenochtitlán just over 500 years ago.
The first great merit is the script. Wonderful! Its authors Hugo Serrano, who is also the producer, and Luis Huitrón, director and protagonist of the production. The enormous achievement of the script is to base each scene on historical, true, documentary data, seasoned by wit, humor, irreverence, which results in brilliant stagings. The musical moments are truly superb and to this we must add the brilliant characterization (costumes, makeup, wigs…). Each costume is a jewel created by Marina Orozco, based on original designs from the colonial era.
It is explained in the hand program that the character of ‘Alma María’ “wears a white canvas suit hand-painted with Puebla Talavera motifs. The birds and mosaics are based on real viceregal tile designs. Sprinkled on the dress is the Shecheyanu prayer written in Hebrew, of great value and Jewish symbolism.
“Aunt Cecilia wears a dress inspired by the murals of Cacaxtla. It highlights the pre-Hispanic importance of cochineal scarlet and Mayan blue. Her breastplate is made up of natural peacock feathers sewn together; and Bárbara wears a suit with tontillo, in which the textile made is a beautiful Italian fabric with a brocade that inspires demasquinado, an ancient technique used in the Middle Ages and which consists of manually embroidering gold metallic threads on a black stone.”
To this we must add the lighting, scenery, videos, everything great, but above all the acting work. bravo, bravo, bravo!
Once again Luis Huitrón, Christian Escorcia and Gina Gran B are great in the central roles. To the already great libretto we must add the brief, but more than effective improvisations.
To these three we must add the performances of Norma López, Marvin Ortega, Carlos Rodea, César Baqueiro, Natalia Quiroz and Alain Peñaloza.
It has been three years of overwhelming success for Las Meninas at the Milan theater; three years of sold out performances, of crazy audiences, of history classes, of overflowing ingenuity, of theater at its highest expression.
Hernan Cortes. Our first villain It is presented on Thursdays until March 7 at 8:45 p.m.