'Barcelona' at the Duke of York's Review: It Doesn’t Just Sightsee, But Leaves A Permanent Mark

★★★★★ | Lynette Linton’s Barcelona begins intensely, passionately. Two lovers come crashing into the doorway, their hands all over each other, consumed with physical desire. One an American tourist (Irene, played by Lily Collins) new to the Barcelona crowd, another a Spaniard (Manuel, played by Álvaro Morte) whom she meets in the bar. It’s the quintessential scene of a night out that is followed by romantic intrigue – the careless stumble, flirtatious laughter, intertwined bodies.

Both are seemingly headed into the familiar sequence of a steamy evening where no one remembers much of it in the morning. And yet, Irene starts to interrupt her lover’s caresses with a concatenation of observations (“This house is so cute!” “Is that the tourist attraction right outside your window?”) and questions (“Where’s the bathroom?” “Where’s my other shoe?”). Unsurprisingly, the romantic tension withers away with her constant interjections, coming to a head when she perceives him judging her for being American and chides him for thinking he is far superior. She repeatedly reminds him of her ancestors in the Antebellum South who walked tirelessly to settle in other parts of the States. Her vague defences rely heavily on a thin form of American moral exceptionalism; his reaction is equally heated, citing a number of historical political scandals in Spain. Suddenly, the romantic passion that brought the two strangers together metamorphosises into political fractures which create an uncomfortable distance between the two.

Lily Collins and Álvaro Morte in Barcelona. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

This isn’t a static play, but an evocative one about the past, present, and future. When such friction erupts, Barcelona asks, how should both proceed? For Irene and Manuel, they nostalgically recount bittersweet fragments of their earlier days – she talks about a bear she lost at the airport, whilst he reveals that he has a wife whom he hardly sees because she cannot bear to speak to him, much less regard him with love anymore.

It’s also a play about the present because he’s faced with an insuperable reality: the workers are coming tomorrow to demolish the house in which his deceased daughter lived. Irene, on the other hand, is thrown into a precarious situation which she has to navigate on the go: we learn that it’s because of her bachelorette party that she and her friends are visiting Spain, and that her feelings toward her fiancé, Todd, are tenuous at best. And lastly, the jarring uncertainties of the future creep dangerously toward the two: what is he going to do about the house, and his inability to let go of his family? And what is she going to do about her impending marriage, one that she views as nothing more than a claustrophobic fetter on her freedom?

Barcelona’s profundity lies in its refusal to shy away from exploring what it means to be a human, and concomitantly, what it means to live with one’s moral foibles. Both characters are deeply flawed and make mistakes, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Both make love to a stranger to fill the emotional void they experience in their own relationships – Irene, for instance, oscillates between raging petulance, prattling away with startling verbosity and swinging a “penis whistle” at Manuel’s face, and a sobering anxiety about her adulthood. In fact, she philosophises at one point that she’s a “tourist in [her] own life”. The sense of never fully being in control and the fleeting nature of life are themes that ricochet like unearthly tunes throughout this play. 

Lily Collins and Álvaro Morte in Barcelona. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

Both attempt to help each other, often in destructive or questionable ways – she vainly begins to help him pack when she learns the workers are on their way, incurring his ire, whilst he impulsively dials Todd’s number and urges her to break it off with him. Yet, it’s often in these moments of glaring unpredictability they thrust upon each other that their counterpart achieves some form of self-actualisation. It’s oddly comforting to see that, in a rather Kierkegaardian fashion, they eventually recognise the dizzying extent of freedom that they actually have over their lives, and make their own existential choices in response. 

The most fascinating thing is that, in many ways, Irene and Manuel’s interactions are a performance ensconced within a performance. Both strangers try to seem happier and more in control than they actually are. It’s only when they allow these smokescreens to be punctured, and for the other to recognise their true fragility, that they reach a deeper understanding of their own selves. The play begins, and almost ends, with a paradoxical sense of uneven reciprocity (or as Marcel Hénaff puts it, dissymétrie alternée), where they prod and insult in equal measures, before finally realising that they are as incomplete as the other.

The metaphor of language is also cleverly used by playwright Bess Wohl (Camp Siegfried, Grand Horizons): their language barrier leads to many comical understandings at first, but eventually leads to some heartfelt moments – it’s Irene’s use of the simplest words, like revealing her name and urging him to go in Spanish, that rescues Manuel from his bleak fate. If anything, Barcelona shows that language, like life, is open-textured and fuzzy around the edges – even the title of the show can’t accurately capture its complexities.

Lily Collins and Álvaro Morte in Barcelona. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

One word for Collins and Morte’s performances: brilliant. Collins delivers dialogue at breakneck pace while slipping admirably between a cocksure American and a hesitant young woman at the precipice of maturity. Morte also plunges into the depths of human emotion, going from caring to violent to sorrowful in the brief span of an hour and a half.

But the power of Frankie Bradshaw’s set design cannot be overstated. The set, a relatively modern-looking home in the titular city of Barcelona, captures all the seemingly trivial details that reflect the impermanence and frailty of Manuel’s life: the assortment of his daughter’s possessions, collection of old records, and a half-concealed ladder behind the door which reminds the audience of the building’s imminent obliteration. Equally, Jai Morjaria does magic with the lighting – not just highly realistic at times, but also simultaneously a reflection of the characters’ fantasies, like when a shadow of Manuel’s daughter dances eerily on the walls. 

I have no shortage of love for this play. I remember leaving the theatre barely aware that I was walking out, consumed by the question that Irene was asking: am I a tourist in my own life? And if so, maybe it’s high time to step on a plane and fly – not necessarily back home, but to some approximation thereof.

★★★★★

Barcelona plays at the Duke of York's Theatre until January 11, 2025.