Theatre
Electra Garrigó
Virgilio Piñera · 1948
Synopsis
In an old Havana mansion that stands in for the palace of the Atreids, Agamenón Garrigó, long since back from Troy, rules over his family with Clitemnestra Plá, who is deceiving him with the young Egisto Don. Their children, Electra and Orestes, who has never left the house, plot the downfall of these parents who stifle them. Cold and theatrical, Electra pushes her brother to act, while a peasant chorus comments on the action by singing ten-line stanzas to the tune of the Guantanamera, alongside a tutor who has a horse's tail.
Context
Written in 1941, the play was premiered in Havana on 23 October 1948 by the Prometeo company, directed by Francisco Morín, with the singer Radeúnda Lima in the chorus parts. Critics received it with hostility, the author answered his detractors publicly, and it was not revived in Cuba until nearly ten years later. It is now regarded as the first rewriting of an ancient tragedy in the Caribbean and as the work that brought Cuban theatre into modernity: Piñera blends in it the structure of Greek tragedy, choteo, the mockery peculiar to the island, and popular music and language.
Who it is for
For a Greek tragedy turned Cuban farce, which opens the way to the island's modern theatre.
Prizes and reception
Poorly received in 1948, it has become a classic of the Cuban repertoire, also staged in the United States in the seventies.