Cocina y Zona de Servicio

Today, I went to watch a play at Teatro la Plaza Isil called Cocina y Zona de Servicio. The play was about a dinner where everything went wrong. Some old friends join after 10 years for a dinner. The actors didn´t show the actual dinner but they showed the kitchen and the patio were the characters used to fight or to say how bad the dinner was or what was happening at that moment in the living room. The play was about the different comments of a disastrous dinner.

The acting was amazing, it was clear that they had a lot of experience. They knew how to balance the space very well, everything was in equilibrium. The actors sometimes gave the back and that made it more interesting because you had to imagine what the character was feeling.

The lights were simple. When the play begun they used a very dim light from the top and then the characters came out and the lights were brighter. From the change of scene they totally turned off the lights and put some music as a background. The music had been recorded and prepared for the play. They used a wide variety of rhythms and different types of music.

The scenery was very realistic, it was like a real kitchen. It had a fridge, a table with three chairs, some windows, glasses and dishes, etc. everything to make it look as real as possible. My seat was very close to the actors and so I could feel as if I were inside the house watching everything from another room because of the realistic scenery also.

The props that they used were also part of the scenery as well. A good example could be broom. It was in the patio next to the lavatory but suddenly the character picked it up and started to walk with it. The broom was part of the character now. It became like a doll for one of the characters. The actress used the broom to talk with it and to hug it because she was feeling desperate because of the disastrous dinner.

The actors didn´t use microphones. The theatre had a good acoustic and so the microphones weren’t needed.

In general, it was a very good play in terms of set design and acting. I spent a good night at the theatre.