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- El baile
El baile (1952), Edgar Neville Romrée
- Titles
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English title: The Dance
Date written: 1952
First production date: 22 June 1952
Keywords: family, family > marriage, love > friendship, love > relationships, women, history > change/revolution, history > memory, history > time, love, society
- Pitch
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Life is a dance, filled with joy and sadness. Time passes, we grow old and lose those we love.
- Synopsis
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In 1900s Madrid, Adela lives a happy life with her husband Pedro. They spend much of their time with their dear friend Julian. Adela is a beauty and she knows it. Pedro sees nothing wrong with his vivacious wife’s desire to look beautiful in public. Julian, however, disapproves greatly. Years ago, Julian and Adela were a couple. While Julian was on an extended trip abroad, Adela fell in love with his friend Pedro. Happily, the shift in Adela’s affections has not dented the bond between the two men. Nevertheless, Julian is still in love with Adela. He shares his feelings quite openly with his friends. Yet Pedro knows he can trust Julian. Adela, in turn, revels in the attention she gets from being adored by two men.
On the night the play begins, Adela is excited about going to a dance. It is a fancy-dress ball, and she has made a fabulous Greek tunic for the occasion. She looks spectacular in it – a little too spectacular for Julian’s liking. He insists that Adela should not be seen in public in such an outfit. Pedro, in contrast, does not see anything wrong with the tunic. Shocked by his friend’s insouciance, Julian decides that he must move into the couple’s home to make sure Adela is kept in check. Adela and Pedro good-naturedly indulge Julian’s impulsive overprotectiveness. They decide not to go to the dance after all. Instead, Adela contents herself by dancing in her tunic with the two men who love her most in the world.
Years go by, and Adela is now in her forties. Julian and Pedro continue to adore her. The men have also grown closer together. As avid entomologists, they have gradually taken over Adela’s lovely living room with glass cases of rare insects. Whereas the younger Adela would have insisted on keeping the room immaculate, the older Adela has lost much of her enthusiasm for life. She worries about her fading beauty and confides in Julian that she plans to leave so that she can experience the thrill of travelling alone without a husband. Just as she plans to do so, however, Pedro receives some shocking news. Adela has been unwell for some time, and the doctor tells Pedro that his wife has only months to live. Grief-stricken, Pedro and Julian decide to hide the truth from Adela. They resolve to give her the happiest months of her life. The first thing they will do is to take her to a masquerade ball. This time, Julian will be happy for her to wear her beautiful Greek tunic in public. The men go to get ready for the dance, leaving Adela alone. She still secretly plans to leave, and goes to write the men a farewell note. As she does so, however, she discovers the document that contains her terrible diagnosis. She says nothing about what she knows to Pedro and Julian. Instead, she goes to put on her Greek tunic. Her last words to the two men are filled with love and regret, as she thanks them both for having loved her.
More years go by and Adela is long dead. She lives on, however, through her granddaughter, Adelita, who looks just like her grandmother did when she was young. Julian and Pedro still grieve bitterly the loss of their beautiful Adela. Adelita’s presence, however, softens the pain. Adelita plans to go to a dance that evening. Times have changed, and the young woman does not see her beauty as the only thing she has to offer to the world. And so, when her plans for the dance fall through, Adelita happily resolves to spend the evening with her two beloved ‘grandfathers’, Pedro and Julian. In fact, Adelita feels so at home with the men that she has decided to stay with them, instead of returning home to her mother in Washington. Now, it is she who puts on the Greek tunic, dances and drinks champagne with the two men. It is almost as if time has gone backwards – as if Julian and Pedro have regained the Adela they loved so much. In the end, Adelita thanks the men for their love, just as her grandmother did, all those years before.
- Sources
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While the earlier play is not necessarily a source, Víctor García Ruiz explores the similarities between El baile and the 1928 play Mrs Moonlight by the British MP Benn Wolfe Levy, which playwright José López Rubio turned into a Spanish work, El tiempo dormido, in 1947. Like El baile, Mrs Moonlight/El tiempo dormido takes place in three acts at different moments of time. One character, Sara, has the ability to never grow old, and at the end of the play she is present with her now-aged and dying husband, suggesting that some element of their love is timeless and enduring (García Ruiz 2008). Josep Sirera also points out a similarity between the character of Julian and his concern about ‘what people will say’, and the husband (also called Julian) from El gran Galeoto by José Echegaray (Sirera 2006: 260-1).
García Ruiz, Víctor. 2008. ‘El baile de Edgar Neville: un tiempo dormido’. Alicante, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/el-baile-de-edgar-neville-un-tiempo-dormido--0/ [accessed October 2011] (Online Publication) (in Spanish)
Sirera, Josep Lluís. 2006. ‘El baile de Edgar Neville’. In Historia y antología del teatro español de posguerra: 1951-1955, ed. Víctor García Ruiz, pp. 257-67. Madrid, Fundamentos (in Spanish)
- Critical response
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El baile (The Dance) was a great success when it premiered in 1952. It won the National Theatre Prize that year. While some critics focus on the light-hearted touches of the play, filled with ‘good humour, tenderness and poetry’ (Jiménez Reinaldo), others note how Neville managed to subtly comment upon the marginalised role of women without descending into melodrama (Sirera 2006). A number of critics have been impressed by the poignant way the play explores human beings’ desire to capture the past and to stop time so that they can live eternally in a present when they were young and happy (Sirera 2006; García Ruiz 2008).
García Ruiz, Víctor. 2008. ‘El baile de Edgar Neville: un tiempo dormido’. Alicante, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/el-baile-de-edgar-neville-un-tiempo-dormido--0/ [accessed October 2011] (Online Publication) (in Spanish)
Sirera, Josep Lluís. 2006. ‘El baile de Edgar Neville’. In Historia y antología del teatro español de posguerra: 1951-1955, ed. Víctor García Ruiz, pp. 257-67. Madrid, Fundamentos (in Spanish)
- Editions
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Neville, Edgar. 1962. El baile: comedia en tres actos, ed. Gerald E. Wade. London, Harrap
Neville, Edgar. 1990. El baile. La vida en un hilo, introduction by María Luisa Burguera. Madrid, Cátedra
Neville, Edgar. 2006. ‘El baile’. In Historia y antología del teatro español de posguerra: 1951-1955, ed. Víctor García Ruiz, pp. 268-328. Madrid, Fundamentos
Entry written by Gwynneth Dowling. Last updated on 28 October 2011.
