Event
Show «Los locos de Valencia»
Do we fall in love because we go mad, or do we go mad for love? Pepa Pedroche seeks the answer in Lope de Vega's comedy about two lovers who pretend to be mad to escape their own problems.
About this event
From 1 to 20 September, «Los locos de Valencia», a work based on Lope de Vega's comedy of the same name and adapted by José Luis Alonso de Santos, will be performed in Sala Verde at Teatros del Canal. Pepa Pedroche, winner of the Unión de Actores award for best supporting actress for the series «Amar en tiempos revueltos» in 2009, will play the leading role.
The play, written in the 1590s, revolves around one question: do we fall in love because we go mad, or do we go mad for love? The young nobleman Floriano, forced into hiding after a man dies in a duel, pretends to be mad and takes refuge in Valencia's Hospital de los Inocentes. Erifila also arrives there, pretending to be mad to avoid a forced marriage. Unaware that both are pretending, the protagonists meet and fall in love, while around them a series of misunderstandings unfolds involving doctors, guards and other patients at the hospital.
In Alonso de Santos's version, madness becomes a metaphor for love and for the very thirst for life, while music functions as a kind of therapy intended to contain the protagonists' passions, although it ultimately proves powerless against them. The work combines five fundamental elements: love, humour, beauty, poetry and optimism. Together, they create a universe of fantasy that envelops the audience.