Like never before… again!: Café concert, humor and delirium as a response to Argentine reality
The show Like Never Before… Again! stars Juampi Mirabelli and Franco Torchia. It premieres on Friday the 1st at El Picadero.
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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina. When the current Argentine government took office last December, Juampi Mirabelli and Franco Torchia were stunned. The situation had paralyzed them. As the months passed, their astonishment didn't subside, but they found a lifeline: humor. Every day in the tragicomedy of Argentine politics provides them with material they could endlessly incorporate into their new work, Like Never Before… Again !
Directed by Alejandro Tantanian and written by Liliana Viola, the first performance will be on Friday, November 1st at midnight at the Picadero Theater in the Balvanera neighborhood of Buenos Aires, just hours before the Pride March.
Humor as a salvation
The show aims to satirize Argentine reality through political humor, and its cast includes Argentina's first male vedette, played by Mirabelli. Originally, the show premiered in 2017 under the direction of Dino Balanzino. At the time, it was the first LGBTQ+ revue theater production. Now, with Tantanian as director, it returns as a revamped café-concert, featuring continuous musical accompaniment by Diego Penelas on piano.
“The star makes you wait, and she has a firm ethical stance that she expresses, and it's very entertaining. Every verse in Liliana's songs is truly magical. They're delirious, but grounded in reality. Unmissable. Being able to work with this material and make it my own makes me very happy. I feel like we're saying what we want to say in a context where not many people dare to say too much, ” Juampi Mirabelli, who has a long career on stage and debuted on television at the age of 14, Presentes
At the same time, renowned journalist and literature graduate Franco Torchia brings to life a comedic genius "capable of delivering a hilarious monologue at lightning speed." The two met during an interview on the program " No se puede vivir del amor" (You Can't Live on Love) , which Torchia has hosted on Radio Ciudad AM 1110 for the past eleven years.
“I met an artist I adored named Lina Morgan, a Spanish showgirl, and that's where the idea for this project started to take shape. When I returned to Argentina, I met Franco, and when we were on air, I said, 'Oh, this is the person I'd like to have with me.' I proposed it to him, and he immediately said yes. He suggested I meet Lili Viola, and it was love at first sight,” Mirabelli recounted.
A script in reality
The play premieres in a context of defunding of culture and complaints of censorship of sexual diversity content in cultural centers dependent on the national government .
“We are extremely grateful to the private sector that will host us, which is the Picadero. It's incredible to say, but we couldn't present it in a national museum, and that needs to be emphasized,” Torchia stated.
For both of them, humor is key to navigating the country's situation, which is far from what they would like. Throughout the play, exclusive interviews are conducted with highly relevant "personalities." Among them are "the presidential blowjob queen," a long-time official at the Casa Rosada (the presidential palace), and the "lesbian bolero singer," whose performance Karina Milei was unable to get out of the Women's Hall.
“At first, we didn’t know if we’d be able to approach it with humor. But meeting people as aligned with our life ethics as Alejandro and Liliana gave us the strength to do it again. The truth is, (the government) keeps giving us material to work with: unfortunately, you can come up with 200,000 new jokes every day. Little by little, we gained courage and realized how necessary it was going to be,” the male showgirl stated.
In the first version of Como nunca, the humor focused on laughing at ourselves, Torchia recalled. It was a parodic and self-critical show about sexual diversity. “This new version, on the contrary, is a highly corrosive show about the current political and ideological climate in Argentina ,” he described.
Another trip to the café concert
The play attempts to revive political humor. “ It never ceases to amaze me that in ten months of Milei’s government there has been almost no political humor whatsoever . A colleague of ours said it’s because we’re stunned and constantly bombarded, unable to even react. Perhaps. So let this show serve as a reaction, as a possible artistic response, with humor, to such a storm as the one we’re going through,” Torchia stated.
However, one of the work's aims is also to move away from nostalgic lament. "There are elements like the café-concert that hark back to a glorious past for Buenos Aires theater, but at the same time, the show manages to avoid mere nostalgia or mourning for what's lost," he explained.
Torchia is particularly interested in the "salvation" he finds in the work. "The meetings with Alejandro, Liliana, and Juampi do me good because, to be honest, it's one of the few times I'm actually laughing. I started to feel like it was a rescue, and we hope it will be for those who come to see us," he shared.
“Whether LGBTIQ+ people or people who are not LGBTIQ+ come to see us, I would like them to feel that sense of true freedom,” he concluded.
Like never before… again! premieres on Friday, November 1st at 11:59 PM at the Picadero Theater (Pasaje Santos Discépolo 1857, CABA). Performances will be every Friday in November.
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