This March, the plays in Madrid are once again one of the most refreshing cultural plans of the season. With temperatures warming up, the stages further heat up the dramatic scene in the capital. There is no shortage of reinterpretations of great classics, subversive novelties that break taboos, great love stories and, of course, there is always room for humor.
Madrid is, one more season, a place of reference for theater lovers. Here are the 8 recommended plays for this April.
1. The struggle for life
Pío Baroja’s struggle for life is a trilogy that is now condensed into a single play that will run until April at the Teatro Español.
The protagonist is Manuel Alcázar, a young man who faces the challenges of life in Madrid in the early twentieth century, although his problems sound at least current. As he struggles to survive in a hostile and merciless environment, Manuel experiences the struggle between his desire for progress and the limitations imposed by his social and economic environment. The work portrays the urban and social landscape of the time, exploring themes such as ambition, survival and the conflict between individuality and social pressures.
📅 March 21 to April 14
Spanish Theater (Plaza Santa Ana, C. del Príncipe, 25)
2. A delicate balance
After more than half a century since its creation, Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance seems to address themes that resonate in other works of its current scope and genre. This work dives into the social crisis of the Western world, especially American, but, above all, explores the loss of a sense of security. The reality of today’s world could not be more in tune with the uneasy undercurrent presented in A Delicate Balance. Everything that could be a guarantee of stability is no longer so; everything that has been built sees its foundations shaken.
📅 F rom April 4 to 28.
Fernan Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa (Plaza de Colón, 4)
3. Instructions for surviving in the dark
Julián is the recent mayor of Villanueva, a small town next to a large natural park, who has promised to legalize the well that the government and the European Union want to close. Julian is unable to find a loophole to support his promise, so he hatches a plan: to make the water in the well holy, through a Marian apparition. In this way, the inhabitants will be able to continue to make use of this (finite) resource provided by the natural site and will also attract the curious.
📅 F rom March 14 to April 7.
Naves del español (Matadero).
4. WAH Madrid
WAH Madrid has established itself as the most powerful leisure event of the year from its headquarters at IFEMA. Therefore, the proposal returns with a new season. WAH continues to break attendance records thanks to a show that does not skimp on visual media and artistic talent and has become a musical and gastronomic experience of reference at European level.
Over the course of five hours, the spectator is immersed in a delirious journey through the history of music thanks to a portentous sequence of musical and stage numbers of all genres and colors.
👉 Buy your tickets here.
IFEMA (Avenida Partenón, 5)
5. Brief history of the Spanish railroad
A brief history of the Spanish railroad is a journey through the beginnings of industrialization in Spain up to the present day and its close relationship with the monarchy. It is a comic and, of course, political look, but, above all, it is an ironic look. The work concentrates those almost two centuries that separate the first trip of the Madrid-Aranjuez railroad and the inauguration of the AVE to Mecca; two hundred years in which it seems that nothing is the same and at the same time certain structures continue to be perpetuated.
📅 F rom April 19 to May 26
María Guerrero Theater (Tamayo y Baus St., 4)
6. Vanya x Vanya
Uncle Vanya is one of those classics that continue to challenge the spectator, this play by Chekhov speaks of the eternal and irresolvable conflicts of the human being. This time, Vanya x Vanya will deal with two independent plays, but with the same actors, including Javier Cámara, and directed by Pablo Remón.
📅 F rom February 29 to April 7.
Naves del Español, Matadero.
7. First blood
Primera sangre brings thrillers and ghost stories to the stages of Madrid. The play deals with the unsolved murder of Laura, a girl kidnapped in the 1990s. The protagonist speaks to the sheriff investigating her case, as well as to her neighbors and teachers about the abuse she has suffered through poetry. First Blood thus reflects on rape culture, fear and power structures over women.
April 26 to June 2.
Valle-Inclán Theater (Plaza de Ana Diosdado, s/n, Centro)
8. The bad nights of Amir Shrinyan
Amir Shrinyan arrives in Europe with political asylum for his sexual orientation from the Middle East. When he arrives here no one quite believes his homosexuality and he feels he must expose his own identity to prove it, testing boundaries he is not comfortable with. This puts him in a bind, because if he doesn’t prove it he can’t stay in Europe, but if he admits it reprisals could await him in his home country.
Albert Tola writes this very contemporary play based on two real and close stories, as well as on his interest in Muslim literature.
From March 27 to April 14.
Teatros del Canal (calle de Cea Bermúdez, 1, Chamberí)